Michael Franti Quotes

Something happened during the 1980s - perhaps the political climate of that time - that caused me to ask how a people would become part of a system that oppresses their own people.

I don't write political music. Political music is immediately obsolete.

Was 'Crucify Your Mind' dedicated to anybody? No, it was a generalization. 'A Most Disgusting Song' is like that, too.

I know people come to my shows expecting me to give voice to some of the frustrations that nice, happy, progressive people like me have with the world.

I can't exactly say why there's not much protest music to speak off. And I know there are acts out there still putting a message in their music.

I am a very radical person - as radical now as I was when I was younger. So my books all have in common my search for understanding of the terrible world we are living in and ways to change it.

I don't set out to write a political song. I am not one of those that feels compelled to write about what's going on.

A protest song is a song that's so specific that you cannot mistake it for bullshit.

If you listen to 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,' by Gil Scott-Heron, that album is dripping with rage.

There's a lot of anger in 'Queen of Denmark,' and that's me getting political.

When I make my socially conscious songs, I go hard with the lyrical content; I go hard with the imagery.

The global capitalist project, which we are all a part of, leaves people behind. I don't know what the answers are - I don't think any actor does - but figuring it out through entertainment can be very useful.

The activism of marginalized people often comes with visibility and being heard. Which can lead people to believe that recognition and awareness is the actual end point. And it is not.

We cannot effect meaningful change if we become complacent, if we become comfortable with our own positions in the status quo.

Regardless of how much media coverage will be received, talking and raising awareness about social injustice isn't enough.

A lot of songs we've written have been political, but they're also personally political.

My films are a personal reflection on the impact that the state - the system and the world - has on me.

Sometimes music isn't the way to talk politics, you know?

I think I'm gradually becoming a more politically aware person.

I was very engaged in my communities throughout college, but I never thought of it as political.

I think the '60s were a time where they were singing about what was going on around them.

Til I was about eight or nine, I had no awareness he was anybody special. Since all our friends were in the movement, I thought what Daddy did was natural. Everybody went to jail, right? Then, one day some kids at school called my daddy a jailbird, and it upset me. That was the beginning of my awareness.

In Japan, there has always been a small number of musicians who have been outspoken on social issues, but they tend to be dismissed as radical.

All good art should be political, I think, and inevitably it all becomes political really, in one way or another.