Michael Franti believes music is the world’s greatest unifier. The 15-year frontman of Spearhead is so dedicated to it and so unwilling to disappoint his fans that he’ll continue to perform even if he’s experiencing debilitating pain.

But you can only play through the pain for so long — especially when said pain turns out to be a burst appendix.

The singer/guitarist faced this reality a dozen shows into his band’s co-tour with Counting Crows. Following one misdiagnosis after another, steadily increasing abdomen pain finally landed him in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center following the band’s July 22 gig in Temecula, Calif. By the time doctors discovered the untreated problem and performed an emergency appendectomy, an abscess had formed and infection was running rampant, the toxins working their way into his blood. The surgeon described it as one of the worst cases the hospital had ever seen.

“I went through a pretty close call and I’m just happy to be alive,” Franti tells me by phone less than two weeks later, still recovering from the ordeal. “I have a big four-inch incision inside of my body that needs to close itself up before I can really do anything.”

Franti kept fans up to date on his condition via a series of videos uploaded to his ongoing FrantiV tour diary. The videos are funny, heartwarming, and in one case, uncomfortably graphic (a clip showing his wound being cleaned by a nurse; check it out after the jump).

This article appears in Aug 12-18, 2009.