192. Song No. 2,894: “East to the West,” Michael Franti & Spearhead
Yell Fire!, 2006

One to the woman, one to the man
One to the culture from the time that it began
One to destruction, one to birth
One for the people who still fight for the Earth
One to the people who suffer for the needs, and
One to the rebels, to the rock and to the beats, and
One to the healer who fights the disease, and
One to the Lorax who speaks for the trees, ’cause
No amount of money, no amount of man
Can bring back to life what’s gone when it’s done, and
One to the people who rise with the sun, and
One to the people who sleep when it’s gone

To the East, to the West
To the North and South…

I am so glad I stopped caring about over-saturation or writing about one musician too much because I am quickly realizing there is no such thing as too much Michael Franti, who’s both the dose of optimism and perspective-shifting kick in the ass I’ve been needing lately.

My favorite constant in anything Franti has done with his ever-widening platform is using his voice to advocate for people, ideas and changes all in need of more attention. This song and everything on Yell Fire! is the kind of stuff you can only get away with on an independent label, the musical aftermath of an eye-opening Middle Eastern trip whose prevailing impression is, I feel, distilled into “East to the West,” a song that yells from the rooftops about how, no matter what corner of the Earth we call home, we’re all a community of “us” so let’s stop looking for reasons to disregard and vilify a “them.”

And, gottdamn, it just feels good to get lost in this era of Franti. An album this politically charged is probably not the best one to trivialize by calling it “comfortable” or describing it as “like slipping into your favorite pair of lovingly battered Chucks” but…. I can’t help it, this album and so much of Franti’s music from the early-to-mid-aughts was so important for so many personal and political reasons that I can’t help but associate them with something warmly nostalgic. (Plus, it’s one of my favorite things any time anyone emphatically bangs out the focal part of the song on a keyboard, and this song has quite a generous offering of that aural thrill.)

It doesn’t just highlight little tidbits of ordinary global life, nor does it stop at just saying that we’re all living our own lives together: It grabs onto every idea bigger than just one small person—art, life, religion—to show that if you really believe in one powerful thing, you believe in the people who comprise it and give it meaning and life. I’m not at all a religious person, but this track’s nigh-hollered “God is too big for just one religion” line gives me chills every time I play this song over again.

There haven’t been enough songs about the importance of loving each other as interconnected humans, and having someone like Franti do it takes a message that for all its significance can be so easily manipulated into something pallid and half-hearted and toothless but elevates it to a conclusion that is all at once powerful and mutually empowering in its accessibility. As someone whose newest favorite rallying cry has been “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you kind?,” it is such a comfort knowing that, however Franti’s music has superficially changed over time, his message of unity has been getting through to others through some finely tuned and masterfully flung music that has been amplifying and doing its subject matter justice for decades.