Michael Franti: Music with a Message

Life is too short to make just one decision
Music too large for just one station
Love is too big for just one nation
God is too big for just one religion!

I love just about every word that comes out of this man’s mouth.

The man is a lyrical genius with these fantastic one liners that make me chuckle or sigh in agreement and appreciation.

Lines like:

Only a rat can win the rat race

or

You can bomb the world to pieces but you cant bomb it into peace.

It’s fantastic to see someone who has the spotlight taking a stand and having an opinion on the world’s happenings.

I don’t know anyone who can make such poetic socio political commentary on the world that’s so relievingly raw and free of B.S. and yet so uplifting and inspiring.

Despite all his speak about the traumas of war, the ills of corporate America, and the injustices of the world, his music is unendingly grounded in love and hope for humanity and the world.

It’s a beautiful thing to have such an insightful and conscious mind be able to create such beautiful music as well – music that incorporates everything from hip hop, to rock, to reggae, to folk, to funk.

It’s almost contradictory in today’s mainstream music scene to have music that makes you wanna think and get up and dance at the same time! There are a lot of songs out there that have the beat but lack the soul and I have the greatest respect for the musicians that have the courage to show us some honest thoughts.

One of my favourite lines of his is:

“To be rhymin' without a real reason, is to claim but not to practice a religion”

Last weekend I had the good fortune of seeing Michael Franti live in Whistler for the 2008 Telus Ski and Snow Board Festival. The energy he has and that he evokes from the crowd is electrifying. His presence is inviting and friendly and his booming voice is such a people rallying force.

I couldn’t resist trying to record some keepsakes of the free concert, but I’ll warn you there are moments when the filming is a little shaky because I couldn’t help but wanna jump with the crowd.

He mostly played songs from his Yell Fire! album (which is amazing and combines a very tropical vibe with strong anti-war lyrics inspired by his trips to Baghdad and the Gaza Strip - which he filmed in a documentary called I Know I’m Not Alone). But he didn’t play the old classic "Stay Human (All The Freaky People)" which is a fantastic song I highly recommend. Find it, listen to it, spread the world.

He did, however, play some new songs from his upcoming September album All Rebel Rockers which I am already itching for. In one of my favourite songs from it he sings “Hey world, you know you better put up a fight” and “You’ve got to let go of re-mote control.”

Here’s Michael Franti feeling and sharing the love

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Here’s a great clip of Michael Franti performing Yell Fire! and Bomb the World to Pieces for Indie 103.1 fm. He gives a nice explanation of the meaning behind Yell Fire! and why he doesn’t wear shoes!

George Stroumboulopoulos from CBC interviewing Michael Franti. This clip gives a nice bio and is a pretty good interview showing some scenes from his documentary I Know I’m Not Alone which focuses on the civilians and the soldiers he meets on his trips to Iraq and The Gaza Strip.

John Butler Trio ~ Ocean

John Butler is a master guitar player and the video below, of his live performance of "Ocean," is one of my favourite videos ever.

It starts off with him drumming and playing the guitar with a smooth, calm ocean rhythm, and then slowly builds into a beautiful spiritual-like offering of his phenomenal mastery of the guitar. It crescendoes and bursts into a stunning spectacle of how music can be the most concrete grab of awe-like spirituality.

I was really excited to see that there are other musicians drumming on their guitar.

There is something familiar in it, since the guitar seems naturally to be a percussion instrument. At the same time, there’s something excitingly new about it, like this could be the future of music – putting together the rhythms of hip hop, drum ‘n’ bass, and reggae, with the melodic twangs and sounds of folk and rock.

Could this be the stirrings of a new genre?

John Butler is widely recognized for beautiful slide-playing and open tunings (common in blues, rock and folk music). The easiest way I can describe open tunings is a way of tuning the guitar so that you can get a major chord from strumming the open strings at the bottom, without fretting, or holding down, any of the strings at the top). Open tunings combined with slide-playing can produce interesting harmonies and rhythmically complex songs. John Butler is a master!

Here’s John Butler demonstrating drumming and playing the guitar at the same time.

YOAV

I first saw YOAV perform when he opened for Tori Amos at the Orpheum here in Vancouver back in December 2007.

He walked on stage alone, carrying nothing but a guitar.

And then, after a slight pause, unleashed an astonishing amount of bass that you would only ever hear in a club.

I was sitting in the balcony, far away from the stage, leaning forward in my seat and squinting hard to try and figure out how so much noise was coming from this one guy. With my eyes glued on him I realized he was drumming on his guitar and somehow looping it back and playing and singing over it. I had never seen or heard anything like it.

My ears were completely tantalized by his rhythms and the trance-like notes coming from his guitar. The beginning of his song "Beautiful Lie" reminded me of the "Born Slippy" song from the final scene of Trainspotting.

Within the first few seconds of his performance I was feeling around in my jacket to see if I had enough cash on me to buy his CD during intermission.

My excitement grew with every song he performed as he showed us the diversity of his music that put together edgy Timbaland-like beats, drum ‘n’ bass-like rhythms, trance-like sounds, soothing guitar, and soulful, thought-provoking lyrics. Not only was I interested in the music - which blew me away - but I was also interested in his words.

A particular favourite song of mine was "Club Thing" – with a beat that just begs you to move. This song was especially popular with the crowd and has tickled the fancy of everyone I know who has heard it and when he performed it at The Media Club in Vancouver in February 2008, the excitement and enjoyment of it was palpable.

YOAV certainly has one of the freshest sounds out there.

Everyone I know, no matter what their taste in music, has been blown away by his talent, because he combines different sounds from different genres so effectively.

And the drumming on his guitar is something worth seeing.

For those of you in Vancouver, he’s performing at The Plaza on May 2^nd. Check out these videos for a little taste.

YOAV in the studio

YOAV making a wicked drum’n’bass beat on his guitar at The Media Club

Music is ...

Music is probably the most fascinating of human creations and appreciations. What it invokes within us, and its holds over us, is mysteriously “other worldy.” Our ability to take sounds – mere vibrations – noise – and combine them into pleasurable patterns we call music is downright phenomenal. The endless, forever evolving range of music expressing and evoking different feelings, sensations, and worlds within us, never ceases to amaze me.

Music is a Sensation.

It is amazing.

Causing feelings and dazes and moments of Elation.

Elevation.

Invigorating bodies and minds

with rhythmic equations.

Incarcerating you into the here and now

with intoxicating combinations:

Of sounds and drum beats

and patterns of entrancing undulations.

Music is Communication.

A sharing of internal spaces and

A screaming of proclamations!

Expressing different moods through emotive vibrations,

for beautifully entrancing durations.

It is a response to the ages,

To heart palpitations

Created from the reverberations of

Crazed times or inspiration.

Always moving

Always changing

Music is a painting.

Of particular times and places,

Of different cultures and subcultures reincarnating.

New genres being created

Outdated

Reinstated.

Always changing.

Music is Educating.

Expressing unifying and dividing ways of

Human Identification.

Telling stories through out the ages

of hope and desperation.

Of love-sick longing loneliness

and quiet contemplations.

Inspiring movements

and social outrage,

and 1960’s folk style

Indoctrination.

Music is Awakening.

It is a moving force like breathing.

Creating energy and connectivity

and conscious moment in-taking.

The energy created from a live performance

can be palpable

Electric

Powerful.

It makes your body itch and quiver

like it were aware of being a part of something cosmical.

Music is fantastically weird.

A wonderful

Quirk of existence.

A testament to the curious

Mysteriously rich

Nature of creation.

Sound. Noise. Vibrations.

And out of them

we put together complex co ordinations.

Harmonizations.

Symphonies.

And technoesque frequencies.

Rhythmic pulsing equations,

Inducing euphoric cathartic

Sensations.

The human mind’s conscious appreciation

Of music and it’s mysterious pulsations

Unlocks and exaggerates the mystery of our minds’ situation.

Music is Erasing.

Soothing. Consuming. Releasing.

Relieving tension and

Unleashing.

It pulls you into directly experiencing

the moment you are hearing.

You are not then, nor there, or anywhere

But here and now, listening.