Franti, Raising The Alarm

As a musician, writer and now documentary filmmaker, Michael Franti is a triple threat.

With a concert tour to support a recent CD ("Yell Fire!") as well as a new book ("Food for the Masses: Michael Franti -- Portraits & Lyrics") and a documentary film ("I Know I'm Not Alone"), has Michael Franti become the King of All Media?

"I'm the underground Rupert Murdoch!" Franti says with a hearty laugh from his San Francisco studio, where he's preparing his next album and the launch of a Spearhead tour that lands at the 9:30 club Friday night.

Franti being Franti -- definitely not Murdoch -- "Yell Fire!" opens with a declamation: "A revolution never come with a warning / A revolution never sends you an omen / A revolution just arrive like the morning / Ring the alarm, we come to wake up the snoring."

Wake-up calls have been a constant in Franti's career, including in his mid-'80s quintet, the Beatnigs; his early '90s agit-hop ensemble, the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy; and Spearhead, which dates to the mid-'90s. The sound has evolved and expanded from the Beatnigs' noisy industrial sound and Disposable Heroes' mix of hip-hop, rock and jazz to Spearhead's danceable swirl of hip-hop, funk, reggae and rock. But the center has always held: sharply crafted, socially and politically conscious lyrics addressing a wide range of topics, such as racism, poverty, hunger, the death penalty, corporate globalization and media manipulation. Always, there is a message of peace and global unity.

"When you have something you want to say, you need to say it," the always outspoken Franti says.

Franti's best-known song, the scathing denunciation of "Television, the Drug of the Nation," first appeared on the Beatnigs' 1988 EP, though the Disposable Heroes' updated version is better known.

"I rewrote the lyrics to reflect how during the Gulf War, cable and CNN started bringing us 24-hour war coverage in new high-tech and 'sanitized' ways," Franti says, describing "a method where it appeared as though no one was actually being killed. I could probably write another version today, and if I did it, it would be about Fox."

Okay, he's definitely not Rupert Murdoch.

After watching coverage of the current war in Iraq on television -- Franti is a critic of the medium, not a Luddite -- the musician did what few other critics have: He grabbed his acoustic guitar and, with a ragtag crew of eight and three digital video cameras, headed to Baghdad for a firsthand look at the human cost of war. He also made a side trip to Israel, visiting the West Bank and Gaza Strip to examine the long-term costs of war and occupation.

"I Know I'm Not Alone," which Franti produced and directed, uses songs from "Yell Fire!" In fact, Franti worked on both projects concurrently (they were released in July) in his San Francisco home. With an editing studio on one floor, a recording studio on another, Franti found himself immersed in the projects.

"It was really a catharsis for me," he admits, "because when I came back, I was so filled with deep, deep sadness and intense anger and rage, and I was trying to find a way to communicate that to other people without them turning their heads away. As I watched all the footage, it became a way for me to purge all that and put it into my songs."

Not that all the songs rage against the machine, though Franti does declare that "those who start wars never fight them / And those who fight wars never like them" and insists it's "Time to Go Home." But the album also includes the reggae ballad "One Step Closer to You," "Tolerance," "Hello Bonjour's" multilingual plea for global unity and the anthemic "I Know I'm Not Alone."