MICHAEL FRANTI + SPEARHEAD

The Bay Area born Franti has been bringing our world exceptionally powerful, deeply felt music under a variety of names and in a wide range of genres for twenty years. From the intense punk rock of the Beatnigs, to the deeply political rap he made with the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy to his joyful and meaningful modern soul music with Spearhead, and now as Michael Franti & Spearhead, this still young man has released an impressive series of recordings that have vividly reflected his status as a musical citizen of this world.

Consider Franti’s most recent musical masterpiece, All Rebel Rockers, an album featuring the legendary production team of Sly & Robbie that reinforces his place as a global force and a true musician of his time. Recently, Franti’s latest release entered the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart in the Top 40 and hit #4 on the Top Independent Album Chart, and further demonstrated that Franti remains very much at the height of his artistic powers.

“As a musician and a man, I more than anything else want to be a unifier,” Franti explains. “I want to bring people together through music and its unique power. And I hope that somehow that sense of unity extends beyond the music.”

ALANIS MORISSETTE
Acoustic

Fourteen years after the breakthrough debut of Jagged Little Pill, an album which earned four GRAMMYs, sold 30 million records and spawned a dedicated worldwide fan base, Alanis Morissette remains not only an enduringly popular artist, but one whose celebrated body of work stems from a fierce commitment to authenticity and, to an equal extent, vulnerability. She has always evidenced that she was an artist with her own point of view and is regarded as one of the most insightful artists of our time. To this day, Jagged Little Pill remains the best-selling debut release by a female artist in the U.S. and is also the highest selling debut album worldwide in music history.

As a recording artist, Alanis Morissette has released a series of groundbreaking albums that have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide. She has won twelve Juno Awards, eight Grammy Awards, and has also received an additional fourteen GRAMMY nominations. Her subsequent five studio albums have all included a series of chart-topping singles. Her most recent release, Flavors of Entanglement, was released in June 2008 and debuted in the US in the Top 10 on Billboard’s Top 200 album chart. The album garnered widespread acclaim and included a worldwide tour playing to ecstatic packed-house crowds all across the globe.

Among a breadth of charity work, Morissette especially finds time to support environmental causes and organizations, such as Reverb, a non-profit that helps musicians and music fans to achieve environmental sustainability through carbon-neutral initiatives. Morissette was one of the first artists to have her CD and DVD materials released on recycled paper. Initially, she paid for this out of her own pocket, but it’s now become an industry standard. Her passions also include women’s issues and artists’ rights on behalf of which she has written several articles, as well as spoken to Congress.

SLY & ROBBIE

Theirs is the ultimate musical marriage, a partnership that, once formed, re-etched the very landscape of not just Jamaican music, but the entire world’s. Such hyperbole is oftentimes rolled out by publicity machines whenever two musical talents come together, but in the case of drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare, it really was an earth-shattering union. Their rhythms have been the driving force behind innumerable songs — one statistician estimated that together they’ve played on approximately 200,000 tracks, and that doesn’t count remixes, versions, and dubs. As a production team, the pair has been the equivalent of a creative storm, the cutting edge of modern dub, ragga, and dancehall.

 
CHERINE ANDERSON

VIEUX FARKA TOURE‘

SELLASSIE

San Francisco Revolutionary Poet and Activist Sellassie is an alternative in today’s hip-hop. With a 2009 West Coast Hip Hop Award for “Knowledge Album of the Year”, his debut, I’m Tryin’ to Make a Livin’ Not a Killin’ is an exploration of socio-economic inequities, political injustices and the realities of ghetto life. A fresh perspective and new sound, Sellassie inspires with strong messages and dynamic beats, proof that there are young black artists that can make music that is creative, street and smart.

TRUTH UNIVERSAL

With his political messages, traditional Hip Hop sensibilities, and lyrics practically being the polar opposite of his mainstream Southern counterparts, Truth Universal belongs to the lesser-known Hip Hop underground in New Orleans. Originally born in Diego Martin, Trinidad, Tajiri Kamau moved to the Big Easy in 1977 at age four. Initially wanting to DJ, he dove head first into hip-hop culture in the mid-‘80s. His parents’ tastes in political reggae and calypso, including that of Mighty Sparrow, Calypso Rose, and Bob Marley, informed his hip-hop collection and guided him towards artists influenced by the Nation of Gods and Earths and others with empowering messages.