Ani DiFranco

Ani DiFranco (IPA: ɑ-ni) (born Angela Marie Difranco on September 23, 1970) is a singer, guitarist, and songwriter. She is known as a prolific artist (having released at least one album every year since 1990, with the exception of 2000) with a devoted cult following, and is seen by many as a feminist icon.

Biography

Born in Buffalo, New York to a Jewish American mother and an Italian-American father, DiFranco, the daughter of two folk music loving parents, started playing Beatles' covers at local bars and busking with her guitar teacher, Michael Meldrum ^*, at the age of nine, and built her career from there.

In 1989, at the age of eighteen, DiFranco started her own record company, Righteous Babe Records, with just $50, and recorded Ani DiFranco, issued in the winter of 1990. Later on she relocated to New York City and toured vigorously.

She is openly bisexual, as described in her song "In Or Out", and, in 1998, married sound engineer Andrew Gilchrist. They separated five years later but remain friends.

DiFranco took time off from touring due to tendonitis halfway through 2005 but has begun touring again in spring of 2006.

DiFranco's father died early in the summer of 2005; however, she continued her summer tour as a legacy to him.

Musical style and the "folk" label

Many have noted a signature staccato style to DiFranco's work [http://www.westnet.com/consumable/1997/06.11/revani.html. Another important aspect is her skill in rapid fingerpicking and use of a plethora of alternate tunings. Her lyrics have also received praise for their sophistication: alliteration (and wordplay in general) is an important component, and a more or less gentle irony fills many of her songs—especially those that deal with the intersection of the personal and political. She is known for her descriptive use of metaphors. She delivers many of her lines in a speaking style notable for its rhythmic variation. The song "Talkin' Mrs. DiFranco Blues," a talking blues song by Dan Bern, strings together some of the most memorable lines from DiFranco's early career for comic effect.

DiFranco's music has been classified as folk rock and alternative rock, but since her early albums she has reached across genres, having collaborated with a wide range of artists including the pop musician Prince, the folk musician Utah Phillips, and both Maceo and Corey Parker. In various songs and albums, she has used a variety of instruments as well as styles—from brass, notably in 1998's Little Plastic Castle, and strings, particularly noticeable on the live album Living in Clip and the recent Knuckle Down. She has also experimented with electronics and synths as seen on her latest studio recording, Reprieve.

Regarding the "folk" label often applied, sometimes in qualified form, to her music, DiFranco has noted (in an interview with Pavement Magazine) 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."

Lyrics and politics

Much of DiFranco's material is autobiographical, in the personal lyric tradition of the singer-songwriter. Much of her material is also strongly political, concerned with contemporary social issues such as racism, sexism, sexual abuse, homophobia, reproductive rights, poverty, and war. The combination of these two characteristics is partially responsible for the early popularity DiFranco enjoyed among politically active college students, some of whom set up fan pages on the web to document her career as early as 1994. Because of DiFranco's rapid rise in popularity in the mid-1990s—a rise that, with little mainstream press, was fueled by personal contact and word of mouth—fans often expressed a feeling of community with each other.

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. She supported Dennis Kucinich in the 2004 Democratic primaries.

Label independence

The success of her record label, Righteous Babe Records (RBR), is also notable. Ownership of RBR allows DiFranco a great deal of artistic freedom, including the ability to release as much, and as often, as she has, and to include controversial material and language. References to her independence from major labels appear occasionally in her songs, most notably in "The Million You Never Made," which discusses the act of turning down a lucrative contract, "The Next Big Thing", a song from the early Not So Soft album which describes an imagined meeting with a label headhunter who evaluates the singer based on her looks, and "Napoleon," on the album Dilate, which sympathises sarcastically with an unnamed friend who did sign with a label. A longstanding rumor, apparently begun by Spin Magazine in 1997, suggests that the friend addressed in "Napoleon" is the musician Suzanne Vega; Vega herself has denied this ^*.

DiFranco has occasionally joined with Prince in discussing publicly the problems associated with major record companies. DiFranco is proud of her label, which employs a number of people in her hometown of Buffalo. In a 1997 open letter to Ms. magazine ^* she expressed displeasure that what she sees as a way to ensure her own artistic freedom, was seen by others solely in terms of its financial success.

Recent work

Educated Guess was released on January 20, 2004. According to the Righteous Babe website, "not since the release of her second album back in 1991 has Ani been quite as much a solo act as she is on Educated Guess." ^* The only other person involved in the record was Greg Calbi, who mastered it. DiFranco performed all the instruments and recorded it 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.

DiFranco's most recent album, Knuckle Down, was released on January 25, 2005. On July 22, 2005, Righteous Babe announced by e-mail that DiFranco has developed a case of tendonitis and subsequently she would take 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. She returned to touring in late April, including a performance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on April 28 2006.

DiFranco's former drummer, Andy Stochansky, has pursued a solo career as a singer-songwriter since leaving DiFranco's band.

DiFranco performed with Cyndi Lauper on "Sisters of Avalon", a track from Lauper's latest collection, The Body Acoustic. She also performed with fellow folk singer Dar Williams on "Comfortably Numb", a track from her 2005 album, "My Better Self".

Righteous Babe recently announced that DiFranco's 18th album, titled Reprieve, has a planned release date of August 8, 2006. "Reprieve" was mistakenly released to iTunes for a time on June 24, 2006- the information on iTunes listed it as being released on August 8, 2002, which most likely caused the confusion.