This whole thing seems upside down, but the whole wide world keeps turnin’ around, life is too short to make just one decision, music’s too large for just one station, love is too big for just one nation and GOD IS TOO BIG FOR JUST ONE RELIGION!
“East to the West” by Michael Franti
This Wednesday was fantastic. All my classes went well… Even the bad girls suddenly developed new personalities and became friendly (their home teacher had words with them) and then in the evening we went down to Osaka for the Michael Franti gig. Now if you don’t know who Michael Franti is, he’s a 6 foot 6 inch giant, genre-defying musician, activist and force for good. In his own words: “Right now, people ask me, ‘What can one person do to change what’s going on with the world?’ I don’t know what one person can do except to connect with other people. In doing that, each of us play our roles. My role is as a storyteller and a songwriter. I’m somebody who is trying to keep the spirits of other people up, despite all the chaos and fear around us” Yeah, and he does a really good job. There’s no gradual build-up at a Michael Franti gig. From the first song everyone is jumping about like mad things and even Hyon Ju (who I never saw dance before) was getting down to the reggae/hip-hop/funk/rock magic. And his songs are actually about things. Important meaningful things. He told us about how he went to Iraq with a video camera and a guitar in 2003 and met both the American troops and the people on the streets. He would play his guitar and they would invite him into their homes and show him the cellars they would shelter in when the bombs fell, sometimes for days or weeks. They would take him into the hospitals and show him what had happened to their children. And he would talk to the troops and they would tell him how before the war, they believed they were there for a reason but now they knew it was all lies… And then he came back to America and felt very alone, but travelling the world playing his music he meets so many people and he realizes he isn’t alone in what he feels and believes and then he sang us a song about that and if you click here: http://www.spearheadvibrations.com/index.html you can watch it (the “I KNOW I’M NOT ALONE” music video).
Then after two and a half hours of pure joy, the show ended and he came into the audience to meet everyone. Wow! Here’s a picture (left to right; mystery lady, Michael Franti, Hyon Ju & Eric):
Michael Franti makes me and Be Ward look like hobbits. The blurry lady in front is Carmen (I think). Thanks for RUINING THE PICTURE!!! (just kidding).
There’s a song “Hello Bonjour” where Franti sings “I don’t need a passport to walk this earth, anywhere I go cause I was made of this earth, I’m born of this earth, I breathe of this earth, and even with the pain I believe in this earth…. every bit of land is a holy land and every drop of water is a holy water and every single child is a son or a daughter of the one earth mama and the one earth papa…”
And he’s right, right? Why do we need passports and so on? Why are we all divided up into convenient little boxes? So he makes music to bring us together: “givin you a beat you can rock and roll to, givin you a sound you can shake your soul to, so hip hoppas punk rockas roots rockas and even wood stockas DON’T NEED A PASSPORT.” And as he sang “Wood stockas” he looked right at Eric! If you look at this picture of Eric and myself back in Kyoto having dinner at Chikyuya, I think you can see why…
Two days later and the calves of my legs are still on fire from all that jumpin’!
Tired but Inspired!
A REVOLUTION NEVER COME WITH A WARNING - A REVOLUTION NEVER SEND YOU AN OMEN - A REVOLUTION JUST ARRIVE LIKE THE MORNING, RING THE ALARM WE COME TO WAKE UP THE SNORIN’!
“YELL FIRE!” by Michael Franti
