music. consciousness. action

Michael Franti featured on triple j today and what a cool dude he is! As Andrew Denton describes him in an Enough Rope interview - “In a pop world dominated by pipe-cleaner bimbos and testosterone-addled rock idiots, every now and then an act of class and substance creeps underneath the wire.”

A rebel with a cause, one of Michael’s many ventures is the Power to the Peaceful Festival. The mission of this festival is to bring people together through music and art to highlight the similarities and celebrate the diversity of all of the world’s inhabitants. It is a not-for-profit, non-partisan organisation dedicated to the promotion of cultural co-existence, non-violence and environmental sustainability through the arts and music. It has already been on this year BUT good news is, he has announced he is heading to Tanzania to stage a festival in February next year in a bid to combat ethnic tensions in the country. Not only will he will document this journey, he has been travelling the world, asking people what it means to be human to compile his long-term documentary called Stay Human.

This excerpt from Franti sums up his passion for justice perfectly: I feel like right now is an opportunity, because in a time of great turmoil comes opportunity for great change. And so all of us, no matter where we are as musicians, as people sitting around the water cooler at work or amongst our families or school teachers or whoever, we all have a position to play in the world right now in determining the direction that the world is going to go. And things are going to change regardless, but we need to make sure that, as Martin Luther King has said, that peace is not merely the absence of war, but it's the presence of justice.

His latest album All Rebel Rockers is out now and in the words of the man himself "It's easy to pick up a newspaper and get frustrated and be like, 'Man, this world is just going to hell.' But I wanted to make a record that made people feel inspired, so they could wake up every day and be like, 'Man, I can face this day and I want to look to positivity and light.'"

I feel like I can take on the world now!