Artist Profiles

Michael Franti

// composer, musician & poet

MICHAEL FRANTI is a composer, musician, and poet from San Francisco, California, United States. He is the creator and founder of Michael Franti & Spearhead. “Stay Human” (2001) is available from Six Degrees Records, “Everyone Deserves Music” (2003) is available from Boo Boo Wax Records, “Yell Fire!” (2006) is available from ANTI- Records. Michael Franti is also recognized as an outspoken supporter for social justice and world peace.

Website: www.michaelfranti.com
Photo: Michael Franti / ANTI- Records

Interview:

Music helps to unlock doors in our hearts that we never knew existed. It brings out emotions in us that have been sometimes locked away for a long time. Sometimes it could be through a beat that you hear or through a melody or through words or a combination of all of them coming together. There are times in life when we feel like we don’t have the courage or the energy to do the things that we know that our hearts are telling us to do. Music can give us that inspiration to try a little bit harder, or to live a little more, or stay on the path a little bit longer.

I feel music is at its best when it inspires love. What I mean by that is in order to grow a tree, it takes the effort of the sun and the soil and the rain and the nurturing of farmers and the wind; everything, and that is what the world needs, nurturing in that same way. For us we need to find out how we are going to be nurturing; are we going to be the sun, the soil? What are we going to do to nurture the fruits of the world? We find it in music. Music helps us to find that song. What is it that each of us is going to sing to the world?

“Music is at its best when it inspires love… What is it that each of us is going to sing to the world?”
– Michael Franti, composer, musician, and poet

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