Word: franti
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...York stop featured Bay Area rappers Blackalicious, making a comeback after a few years’ hiatus, as openers. Playing to a fairly sparse crowd, MC Gift of the Gab and DJ Chief Excel worked hard to raise a vibe that never entirely blossomed. Michael Franti of Spearhead had no such problem. Within seconds of his arrival onstage, he was pogo-ing his entire 6’6 length into the air, and the audience wasn’t long in joining him. Franti gives more to his audience than any other performer, his energy seamlessly carrying...
...Franti even took a Bob Dylan turn, breaking out an acoustic guitar for a solo acoustic protest song circling around the lyric “We can bomb the world to pieces/ But we can’t bomb it into peace.” Franti makes no secret of his politics, and the audience, who outdid the music for eclecticism, was noisy in its approval...
...fronts his own outfit, paced the stage like a panther, muscles bulging through his turtle-neck. Driven by the triple engine of his three percussionists, the energy was relentless, and Denson showed himself to be an impressive vocalist as well, barking and growling into the mic. Denson invited Franti and his MC Radio Active back to the stage for the high point of the evening, an extended jam that metamorphosed lithely from Denson’s acid jazz to Franti and Radio Active’s soul conscious rhyming...
Making a protest you can party to is tough. Michael Franti and Spearhead's latest album, Stay Human, ambitiously incorporates a running play about a Mumia Abu-Jamal-like death-penalty case; the results are music as stiff and analysis as thin as the CD they're burned onto. But it does point to a potential flash point for the revival of protest music in the West: capital punishment in particular and law enforcement in general are bringing together black and white artists as few issues have since apartheid. The New York City police shooting of African immigrant Amadou Diallo...
...whimsical Daulne liked the symbolism of the number seven). It's a creative breakthrough for the group--its previous work, which was mostly a cappella, often seemed unfinished and overly jokey. For Seven, instrumentalists have been brought in to help out, as have some accomplished producers, including Michael Franti of the hip-hop soul group Spearhead...