Michael Franti

Musician

89 Quotes

I try to use the attention that I get to help and to serve, and that's really what I'd see as my work - to serve my community, serve the planet, serve my family. And I think a celebrity is someone who draws the attention on themselves, and then it kind of stops there.

I eat bags and bags of cashews. I've got them in the kitchen, and about ten feet away I've got another bowl on the kitchen table. In my backpack, I've always got a bag of cashews. I started eating them in the airports because that's the one food that you can find in every airport that's actually nutritious.

Through music I either tame my demons or unleash them and allow them to be what they are. I don't want the music to be about provocation, I want the music to bring you to a place where you feel at home.

You get everything you could have ever wished for if you're willing to give that eternal bliss away to somebody else, to give it back.

There are so many things to be worried about, and I wanted to make a record that people could put on, and it would lift them up the way the sun did for me each day.

To sit back and say, 'Oh, we're going to let the government do whatever they want, right or wrong,' is giving up.

Jamaica's a country of great dichotomy. On the one hand you have a tourist industry with great beaches and resorts, but on the other you have such great poverty and the violence that goes along with that.

I don't know if it's so grand that I can change the entire world, but I know that I can help one person. So that's the goal.

My usual day is I get up around 11 o'clock and do yoga and then eat afterwards. Then I have sound check and play soccer and do running with the guys in the band after sound check, and then do the show and eat dinner after the show and usually get to bed around 3 o'clock by the time we get everybody on the bus and get rolling.

Collectively, we activists are essential to advancing U.S. policy to help empower marginalized people to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty for good.

The corporate media is there to push the agenda of the sponsors, and many of those sponsors are weapons manufacturers. So it stands to reason that you won't get a diversity of opinions on television.

I really believe that, as an artist, my opportunity to help to bring about awakening is one that should come from a personal process that someone has, and not from me telling somebody that this is the way it is.

I have moments all the time when I play.

I'm always trying to find optimistic ways to express myself.

My mother birthed three children and she adopted myself and another African-American son. My adoptive parents were Finnish. I grew up in a white picket neighborhood.

Playing on the streets of Iraq, or in Israel or the Gaza strip, I'd sing angry protest songs against war. People would say, 'Make us clap, make us dance, and laugh and sing.' It really made me think about the importance of happy music.

The U.S. has historically been the world's largest contributor to climate change.

Music was a central part of my childhood because my mother played organ and piano in the church, and that meant all us kids had to be in the church choir.

San Francisco has always been a haven for misfits and weirdos. I'm both of those, which is why I came here.

I really encourage people to travel so we can see how the rest of the world views our country. That's really important. Secondly, as artists, activists, and citizens who vote, we have to begin to vote from our heart.

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