Arts Alive! podcast: Michael Franti

First, the bad news. Just three days ago, singer, songwriter and bandleader Michael Franti canceled tonight’s scheduled concert at the BayCare Sound – his wife Sara went into premature labor (their daughter’s due date was June 6). So he put off several weeks of shows, understandably.

That leaves us with this Arts Alive! interview, conducted with Franti at the end of last week (he mentions the impending blessed event.) In it, he discusses all the things that motivate and inspire him.

It’s a pretty good interview, so we thought, let’s just publish it anyway. The BayCare Sound show has been rescheduled for Sept. 19.

A longtime activist for humanitarian causes, Franti’s soul and reggae-influenced rock music has always had a deeper meaning – his interest in human rights, and freedoms, is both global and internal.

His most recent songs, like “Be Who You Are” and “Break Up With Everything,” focus on the very human struggle towards personal betterment. Franti, who’ll turn 60 next week, has in recent years discovered the power (and deep importance) of family in making himself whole.

Not that he isn’t still learning.

“Strength isn’t trying to just muscle through life and not experience emotions,” he says in this interview. “Strength is to create the foundations in your life so that you can be free to have ease of heart, and find that freedom of cry when you need to, dance when you need to, laugh when you need to, and appreciate the subtle details.

“And I’m only learning that after 25 years of yoga and years of therapy and everything else, to try to figure out who I am today.”

A note: Franti had just arrived in the United States from Bali, where he and his wife live (and run a boutique yoga hotel). So this interview was conducted over the telephone, rather than inside our cozy Arts Alive! studio, and recorded with a stereo microphone.

He begins by talking about Bali and why he gravitated there.

Click on the arrow to listen to the interview.