Wink, Wink Michael

Michael Franti Rocks Blue-Grass Crowd
by: Kim Haswell

My favorite thing to do is to mix politics and music....
kids and music....
dinner and music....
and well, .... uh-hum....
other things and music.

I was fortunate enough to get to do all that (well, not all of it... I was sharing a tent with my kids) this past weekend at the Strawberry Music Festival at Camp Mather. The Festival goes on rain or shine Memorial Day and LaborDay weekends from Thursday to Sunday every year.

My third love after family and friends is music. My fourth love is politics. Strange you say? It isn't. Politics is in what we breath, drink, eat, look at, drive on... you get the picture.

The importance of politics doesn't need to be explained to a man named Michael Franti. Franti absolutely rocked the traditionally bluegrass festival Friday to close the night. How do I know he is political? My first exposure to Franti was through his documentary, I Know I'm Not Alone.

This movie is about Michael, his guitar and a few cameras that traveled to Iraq and the hot-bed areas of the the Palestine/Israel conflict. The movie brought him into regular citizens' living rooms and their worlds. He talked to them about their lives and heard things that we would never hope to comprehend. He wanted people to see the side of war that The Administration and the media don't want us to see. He wanted us to see the "Human Cost of War."

As for Michael Franti and the Spearheads' music, I knew the songs from his movie, but, I hadn't listened extensively. My brother-in-law asked what kind of music he did. I said, well, "it is a cross between raggae, rap and rock." Classifying Michael as a musician is similar to trying to classify Robin Williams as an actor.

So, there we were, wrapping up a Dave Alvin set. (Yes, we got to see Dave Alvin and Michael Franti in the same night. Yes, we know what a huge score that is.) My six-year-old daughter, Kennedy wanted to go up to the front to see Franti. She wanted to dance, which is typically not a problem at either side of the large tarps and mass of lawn chairs in the meadow. My husband and I went to take Kennedy and our 3-year-old son, Martin to the front, when we were clearly blocked by a mass of humanity.

9-year old girls were rushing the stage. I observed this along with another woman, who smiled and said, "only at Strawberry." Kennedy got up on her father's shoulders and said, "Daddy, I want to get half-way to the front."

My three-year old son was checking the scene out but then, as if to tell me, "mommy, I'm tired," he stuck his thumb in his mouth and I took him back to our seats. Back at the seats, two different friends said Franti reminded them of Ben Harper. Good call, I thought.

Franti spoke of war, prisons, education, you name it. Franti mixed politics and music. And, judging by the sentiment after the show at camp, many (men & women) would love to have the opportunity to mix music and just about anything with Michael. Wink, wink Michael.