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Ani DiFranco

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Ani DiFranco

Ani DiFranco (Template:PronEng) (born Angela Maria Difranco on September 23, 1970) is a singer, guitarist, and songwriter. She is known as a prolific artist (having released nineteen albums)[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] and is seen by many as a women's rights[citation needed] and feminist icon.[11][12][13]

Biography

DiFranco was born in Buffalo, New York to mother Elizabeth and father Dante, both graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[14][15] She started playing Beatles covers at local bars and busking with her guitar teacher, Michael Meldrum,[16] 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),[6] 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 later started another record label called Hot Wings Records when the two parted ways. Hot Wings released the work of Buffalo area female musical performers with styles similar to that of 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, she relocated to New York City, where she took poetry classes at The New School and toured vigorously.

DiFranco has identified herself as bisexual for much of her career [17][18] and in 1998, she married sound engineer Andrew Gilchrist in a Unitarian Universalist service in Canada, overseen by U.U. minister Utah Phillips. Numerous media sources reported that her fans felt betrayed by her union with a man.[19] 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 1997 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]

In July of that year, DiFranco developed tendonitis and took a hiatus from touring. (DiFranco had toured almost continuously in the preceding fifteen years, only 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 DiFranco Napolitano [20], at her Buffalo home on January 20, 2007. The child's father is DiFranco's boyfriend Mike Napolitano,[21] the co-producer of DiFranco's 2006 release Reprieve.

She has continued touring into 2008 with a backing band consisting of Todd Sickafoose on upright bass, Allison Miller on drums, and Mike Dillon on percussion and vibes.

Recognition

On July 21, 2006, DiFranco received the "Woman of Courage Award"[22] 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 Evolve.

Musical style and the "folk" label

DiFranco's guitar playing is often characterized by a signature staccato style,[23][24] rapid fingerpicking and many 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 and social activist Utah Phillips (on "The Past Didn't Go Anywhere" in 1996 and "Fellow Workers" in 1999), 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."[25]

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 and 2008 Democratic primaries.[26]

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.[27]

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] This possibility is made somewhat far-fetched by the fact that DiFranco was only 17 and still living at home in Buffalo when Suzanne Vega had released her album and was living in New York City.

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[28] 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.

Recent work

Ani DiFranco, RZA, and Steve Albini at
The New Yorker festival in September 2005.

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 rendition of Greg Brown's "The Poet Game" appeared on Going Driftless: An Artists' Tribute to Greg Brown.

Her song "You Had Time" featured in the 2001 Canadian film Lost and Delirious.

Discography

Studio albums

Live albums

EPs

Demos

Videos

Poetry

Samples

Template:Multi-listen start Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen end

See also

References

  1. ^ Brian Orloff (Apr 25, 2006). "Ani DiFranco Salutes New Orleans". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2008-01-02. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ^ Sarah Rouleau (December 28, 2007). "'Canon' will satisfy most DiFranco fans". The Reporter Online. Retrieved 2008-01-02. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  3. ^ David L. Coddon (August 10, 2006). "Giving us all a 'reprieve'". San Diego Union-Tribune. Retrieved 2008-01-02. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ John Malkin (October 31, 2004). "Art Is Activism". AlterNet. Retrieved 2008-01-02. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ Ian Story (January 20, 2005). "Ani DiFranco buckles down for her new album 'Knuckle Down'". The Ohio State University Lantern. Retrieved 2008-01-02.
  6. ^ a b Gene Stout (August 21, 2006). "DiFranco makes time for radical sabbatical: Indie rocker records new album and prepares for motherhood". The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved 2008-01-02. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. ^ "Activist Ani: Singer/Songwriter DiFranco delivers 'Reprieve,' a political wolf in melodic sheep's clothing". Southern Voice. June 9, 2006. Retrieved 2008-01-02. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  8. ^ Leslie Flynn (February 3, 2005). "D.I.Y outlook fuels DiFranco's music". Daily Texan. Retrieved 2008-01-02. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  9. ^ Andrew Hampp (June 24, 2006). "Singer's new songs leave fans unable to follow along". The Columbus Dispatch. Retrieved 2008-01-02. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ Mark Brown (August 17, 2006). "Just plain folks: Ani DiFranco gives her New Orleans neighbors a soulful 'Reprieve'". The Rocky Mountain News. Retrieved 2008-01-02. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  11. ^ "Sound Bites". Daily Texan. September 17, 2002. Retrieved 2008-01-02. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. ^ Lori Leibovich (March 27, 1998). "Mother Who Think: Hey hey, ho ho, the matriarchy's got to go". Salon. Retrieved 2008-01-02. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  13. ^ "Fame hasn't changed the way DiFranco works: Independently". The Sacramento Bee. April 14, 2000. Retrieved 2008-01-02. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  14. ^ Ani DiFranco
  15. ^ Ani DiFranco Biography - Discography, Music, Lyrics, Album, CD, Career, Famous Works, and Awards
  16. ^ Notes on the album Open Ended Question
  17. ^ Ani DiFranco, Folksinger and Entrepreneur by Kris Scott Marti, November 28, 2004
  18. ^ [1] by Achy Obejas, The Advocate, Dec 9, 1997
  19. ^ Biography of Ani DiFranco on gotpoetry.com
  20. ^ "Introducing Petah Lucia DiFranco Napolitano" Celebrity Baby Blog. July 3, 2007.
  21. ^ Dowd, Kathy Ehrich. "Singer Ani DiFranco Welcomes a Daughter." People. January 23, 2007.
  22. ^ Rolling Stone news
  23. ^ Facts about Ani
  24. ^ Ani DiFranco, Living in Clip by Jon Steltenpohl
  25. ^ Rock Troubadours by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers
  26. ^ Lauren Gitlin (August 27 2003). "Ani, Willie Support Kucinich". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2007-11-10. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  27. ^ Educated guess article
  28. ^ Interview with Ms. Magazine
  29. ^ MMguide.musicmatch.com Retrieved on 06-06-07
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