Spearhead: Now Spear This!

Spearhead play the Arena on Friday and the Great Northern Hotel in Byron Bay on Saturday. Michael Franti will be in store at Skinnys from 3pm Friday and performs a spoken word set at the Brisbane Social Forum at the Powerhouse on Saturday.

We all should be very excited to have Michael Franti back on our shores, in Australia for performances with his band Spearhead as well as solo spoken word appearances.

Because the Franti/Spearhead humanist message can make you still feel good about the world. And because the latest Spearhead album Stay Human is an epic, passionate record, seamlessly melding raucous hip hop, laid-back soul and freaky disco. The album focuses on the evils of the death penalty while still elevating the spirit with the sort of organic soul/funk that makes Marvin Gaye’s What’s Goin’ On or Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions such eternally uplifting records.

“Both of those records were musical inspirations when making Stay Human, in fact all the music that Stevie and Marvin did,” says Michael. “As well as Sly Stone, Bob Marley, Bill Withers. I really like music that is able to capture ideas about social issues but puts them into songs that you can relate to your girlfriend. You know, when you talk about love it could mean personal love or it could mean universal love.”

For me, Stay Human also recalls another Stevie Wonder album, Songs In The Key Of Life, in terms of embracing different musical styles. Michael clearly agrees.

“That was actually the first record that I ever listened to over and over and over again,” he says. “My brother had that record and there’s so much musical breadth, but it all still sounds like Stevie in the end. That’s what I try to do with my records, I really like to go into different styles, but in the end I want it to sound like me.”

The narrative thread that runs through Stay Human relates to the death penalty, in particular the plight of a fictitious character Sister Fatima, who is wrongly accused of murder. In between songs, her story is documented through a simulated community radio broadcast. I ask if the album has provided food for thought for people who either sit on the fence when it comes to capital punishment or who are even pro-death penalty?

“Yeah, I did this interview with a guy from the New York Post, which is a very conservative paper,” says Michael. “They had warned me in advance that he was in favour of the death penalty. So we met in New York and talked for a long time. He said ‘I listened to this album over and over again. And, you know, I disagree with your views on the death penalty, but I really think that in the case of Sister Fatima, they did the wrong thing.’ I just looked at him and said, ‘You can’t have it both ways. You either don’t kill anybody, or you run the risk of killing someone who is innocent.’ But that’s not the reason I’m opposed to it. I’m opposed to the death penalty because I believe that none of us has the right to kill.”

Stay Human is a record that covers a weighty subject matter and yet avoids being oppressive to listen to. In fact, it is frequently extremely uplifting.

“That’s really important to me,” says Michael. “I think that whenever you’re dealing with subjects of a very serious nature, you have to include a smile. For me, that smile is something I wear on my face and something I try to put into my music. I try to make my music enjoyable, uplifting and able to cover the rainbow of emotions.”

Franti’s previous group the Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy also tackled serious issues, soundtracking them with abrasive sounds and hard, crunching beats. I ask if that desire to include a smile in his music was why Spearhead came into existence.

“Yeah,” he replies. “There was a time with Disposables when I’d be up on stage and ranting about everything that was going on in the world, but I’d realise there were days when I didn’t want to be angry. But it became like a routine, people would expect me to be this angry person on stage, even though there were times when I wasn’t feeling that way. And so I decided to write an album of songs about a lot of different things, so on some days I could sing angry songs and on other days if I didn’t feel like it, I didn’t have to.”

Far from Disposable’s fury, Spearhead shows are euphoric events, full of positivity and messages of unity.

“We try to make our shows a celebration of diversity,” says Michael. “Our shows are very high energy and we put our hearts and souls into every performance. We really encourage audience participation and dancing and unabashed revelry, as well as some fist-pumping at times, you know?”

What is your response to September 11 and America’s reaction to what happened on that day?

“I believe that we shouldn’t be in a war against terrorism, we should be in a war against militarism,” Michael states. “What America has done, in the bombing of Afghanistan, I hate. I hate that as much as the bombing that occurred in New York and Washington DC. I think that it’s important that we raise our voices. There are voices that are willing to go out on a limb and speak for peace.”

What do you make of George W Bush’s escalated approval rating since these events?

“I see that there are people out there who are saddened and hurt by what happened and they want something to fix that pain. So George Bush tells them, ‘We’ll get those bad people’ and we bomb the crap out of this nation, which is one of the poorest countries on Earth. We don’t have in custody the leaders of the Taliban, we don’t have Osama bin Laden who is Prime Suspect No 1, so what do we do? We’ve just made a bunch of people’s lives end and those whose lives didn’t end, we just added to their misery. I actually went to the site in New York, I went to Ground Zero, and the thing that I left with after seeing the bombing there, was ‘How can we do this to any other person? How could anyone wish this on anybody else?’”