Ani DiFranco (IPA: [ˈɑ.ni]) (born Angela Maria Difranco on September 23, 1970) is a singer, guitarist, and
songwriter. She is known as a prolific artist (having released seventeen albums in as many
years) and is seen by many as a women's rights and feminist icon.[citation needed]
Biography
DiFranco was born in Buffalo, New York to an American Jewish mother and an Italian-American father, both folk
music lovers.[citation needed] She started playing Beatles
covers at local bars and busking with her guitar teacher, Michael Meldrum,[1] at the age of nine.
In 1989, at the age of eighteen, DiFranco started her own record company, "Righteous Records" (renamed Righteous Babe Records in 1994), with just $50.[citation needed] Prior to the renaming of Righteous Records to Righteous Babe Records,
DiFranco worked with manager Dale Anderson, a writer for the Buffalo News, who himself
started another record label called Hot Wings Records when the two parted ways. Hot Wings released the work of Buffalo area
female musical performers working within a similar style to DiFranco. Early Releases of her CDs produced prior to 1994 are
labeled with the original Righteous Records label. Ani DiFranco was issued
on the label in the winter of 1990. Later on she relocated to New York City, where
she took poetry classes at the New School and
toured vigorously.
DiFranco has identified as bisexual for much of her career [2][3] and in 1998, she
married sound engineer Andrew Gilchrist in a
Unitarian service in Canada, overseen by
Unitarian minister Utah Phillips. Numerous media sources reported that her fans felt
betrayed by her union with a man[4]. DiFranco and Gilchrist
divorced five years later but remain friends.[citation needed]
In 1998, DiFranco's drummer, Andy Stochansky, left the band to pursue a solo career
as a singer-songwriter. Their rapport during live shows is showcased on the 1996 album Living
In Clip.
DiFranco's father died early in the summer of 2005; however, she continued her summer tour as a tribute to him.[citation needed]
On July 22, 2005, DiFranco developed tendonitis and
subsequently took a hiatus from touring. DiFranco had toured almost continuously in the preceding fifteen years, taking brief
breaks to record studio albums. Her 2005 tour concluded with an appearance at the FloydFest
World Music and Genre Crossover festival in
Floyd, Virginia. DiFranco returned to touring in late April 2006, including a
performance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on
April 28.
DiFranco gave birth to a daughter, Petah Lucia, at her Buffalo home on January 20, 2007. The child's father is DiFranco's
boyfriend Mike Napolitano,[5] the co-producer of DiFranco's
2006 release Reprieve.
Recognition
On July 21, 2006, DiFranco received the "Woman of Courage Award"[6] at the National Organization
for Women (NOW) Conference and Young Feminist Summit in Albany, NY. Past winners have included singer and actress
Barbra Streisand and Sen. Barbara Boxer,
D-Calif. DiFranco is the first musician to receive the award, given each year to a woman who has set herself apart by her
contributions to the feminist movement.
DiFranco has been toasted by the Buffalo News as the "Buffalo's leading lady of rock music." The News further said: "Through
the Righteous Babe Foundation, DiFranco has backed various grassroots cultural and political organizations, supporting causes
ranging from abortion rights to gay visibility."[citation needed]
Since 2003, DiFranco has been nominated four consecutive times for Best Recording Package at the Grammy
Awards, one of which she won, in 2004, for Educated Guess.
Musical style and the "folk" label
DiFranco's guitar playing is often characterized by a signature staccato style,[7][8] rapid fingerpicking and use of a plethora of alternate
tunings. She delivers many of her lines in a speaking style notable for its rhythmic variation. Her lyrics, which often include
alliteration, metaphor, word
play and a more or less gentle irony, have also received praise for their sophistication.
The song "Talkin' Mrs. DiFranco Blues," by Dan Bern, strings together some of the more
memorable lines from DiFranco's early career for comic effects.
Although DiFranco's music has been classified as both folk rock and alternative rock, she has reached across genres since her earliest albums. DiFranco has collaborated
with a wide range of artists including pop musician Prince, folk musician Utah Phillips, funk and soul jazz musician Maceo Parker
and rapper Corey Parker. She has used a variety of
instruments and styles: brass
instrumentation was prevalent in 1998's Little Plastic Castle, a
simple walking bass in her 1997 cover of Hal David and
Burt Bacharach's Wishin' and Hopin',
strings on the 1997 live album Living in
Clip and 2004's Knuckle Down, and electronics and synthesisers in 1999's To the Teeth and DiFranco's latest
studio recording, Reprieve.
DiFranco herself noted that "folk music is not an acoustic guitar — that's not where the heart of it is. I use the word 'folk'
in reference to punk music and rap music. It's an attitude, it's an awareness of one's heritage, and it's a community. It's
subcorporate music that gives voice to different communities and their struggle against authority."[9]
Lyrics and politics
Although much of DiFranco's material is autobiographical, it is often also strongly political. Many of her songs are concerned
with contemporary social issues such as racism, sexism,
sexual abuse, homophobia, reproductive rights, poverty, and war. The combination of personal and political is partially responsible for DiFranco's early
popularity among politically active college students, some of whom set up fan pages on the
web to document DiFranco's career as early as 1994. Because DiFranco's rapid rise in
popularity in the mid-1990s was fuelled mostly by personal contact and word of mouth rather than mainstream media, fans often expressed a feeling of community with each other.[citation needed]
DiFranco has expressed political views outside of her music. During the 2000 U.S. presidential election, she encouraged voting for Ralph Nader in non-battleground states.[citation needed] She supported Dennis Kucinich in the 2004 Democratic primaries.[citation needed]
On the subject of religion, DiFranco has stated:[citation needed]
"Well, I'm not a religious person myself. I'm an atheist. I think religion serves a lot of different purposes in people's
lives, and I can recognize the value of that, you know, the value of ceremony, the value of community, or even just having a
forum to get together and talk about ideas, about morals — that's a cool concept. But then, of course, institutional religions
are so problematic."
Label independence
Ownership of Righteous Babe Records allows DiFranco a great deal of artistic
freedom. For example, on her 2004 album Educated Guess, DiFranco played all of the
instruments, provided all of the vocals, and recorded the album by herself at her home on an analog 8-track reel to reel. She was also involved in much of the artwork and design for the
packaging. The only other person involved in the record's musical production was Greg Calbi, who mastered it.[10]
References to her independence from major labels appear occasionally in DiFranco's songs, including "The Million You Never
Made" (Not A Pretty Girl), which discusses the act of turning down a lucrative
contract, "The Next Big Thing" (Not So Soft), which describes an imagined meeting
with a label head-hunter who evaluates the singer based on her looks, and "Napoleon" (Dilate), which sympathizes sarcastically with an unnamed friend who did sign with a label. A long standing
rumor, apparently begun by Spin Magazine in 1997, suggests that the friend addressed in
"Napoleon" is the musician Suzanne Vega; both DiFranco and Vega have denied
this.[citation needed]
DiFranco has occasionally joined with Prince in discussing publicly the problems
associated with major record companies. DiFranco is openly proud of her label, which employs a number of people in her hometown
of Buffalo. In a 1997 open letter to Ms. magazine[11] she expressed displeasure that what she considers a way to ensure her own
artistic freedom was seen by others solely in terms of its financial success.
Ani DiFranco,
RZA, and
Steve Albini at
The New Yorker festival in September 2005.
Recent work
On September 11, 2007, she released the first retrospective of her career, titled Canon
and for the first time, a collection of poetry in a book titled Verses.
DiFranco's album, Reprieve, was released on August
8, 2006. It was previously leaked on iTunes for several
hours around July 1, 2006, due to an error saying it was released
in 2002.[citation needed]
DiFranco performed with Cyndi Lauper on "Sisters of Avalon", a track from Lauper's 2005
collection The Body Acoustic.
She also collaborated with fellow folk singer Dar Williams on "Comfortably Numb", a
Pink Floyd cover song from Williams' 2005 album, My
Better Self.
In 2002, her introspective and soulful rendition of Greg Brown's "The Poet Game" appeared
on "Going Driftless: An Artists' Tribute to Greg Brown."
Discography
Studio albums
Live albums
- 1994 - An Acoustic Evening With
- 1997 - Living in Clip
- 1998 - Women in (E)motion (limited distribution)
- 2002 - So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter
- 2004 - Atlanta - 10.9.03 (Official Bootleg series)
- 2004 - Sacramento - 10.25.03 (Official Bootleg series)
- 2004 - Portland - 4.7.04 (Official Bootleg series)
- 2005 - Boston - 11.16.03 (Official Bootleg series)
- 2005 - Chicago - 1.17.04 (Official Bootleg series)
- 2005 - Madison - 1.25.04 (Official Bootleg series)
- 2005 - Rome - 11.15.04 (Official Bootleg series)
- 2006 - Carnegie Hall - 4.6.02 (Official Bootleg series - available in stores)
- 2007 - Boston - 11.10.06 (Official Bootleg series)
EPs
Demos
Videos
Poetry
Samples
See also
References
External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
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| Persondata |
| NAME |
DiFranco, Ani |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES |
DiFranco, Angela Marie (birth name) |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION |
musician and activist |
| DATE OF BIRTH |
September 23 1970 (1970--) (age 37) |
| PLACE OF BIRTH |
Buffalo, New York |
| DATE OF DEATH |
living |
| PLACE OF DEATH |
|
|
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