Michael Franti staying positive amidst the gloom

Michael Franti may have taken the mellower route with Spearhead, but he still rails against America’s divisions, writes Ed Power

MICHAEL FRANTI has spent the past three months crossing America in a tour bus and what he saw out there, in the great wide open, did not fill him with hope.

“People in our country are divided,” says the singer, rapper, poet and advocate for shoeless living (he has gone unshod since 2000, though he will don flip-flops if a restaurant insists). “Donald Trump is selling is a brand of conservatism filled with division, racial rhetoric, religious discrimination and prejudice.”