Ani Difranco Biography
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 23 September 1970, Buffalo, New York State, USA. Prolific feminist singer-songwriter Ani (pronounced Ah-nee) DiFranco began performing at the age of nine, establishing her independence by living on her own from the age of 15 onwards. She released her initial recordings on her own Righteous Babe Records in 1990, quickly cultivating an identity through her visual appearance (piercings, dyed or shorn hair) that had little to do with precursors such as Joan Baez. After attending art school in her native Buffalo, DiFranco moved to New York City and the New School for Social Research. In the evenings she played sets at local bars, writing songs that soon identified her as a precocious talent. Literate, ebullient and a natural live performer, she quickly won converts drawn equally from folk and rock audiences. Her debut album confirmed this promise, its lyrics informed by feminist theory but never subsumed by rhetoric or preciousness. As she told Billboard magazine in 1995: ‘It’s not like I have an agenda in my music. It’s just that to me, the world is political. Politics is music - is life! That’s the lens I look through.’
DiFranco’s versatile guitar playing, a facet often overlooked by critics, was displayed admirably on 1991’s Not So Soft, which saw a continuation of the themes explored on her debut. For the subsequent Imperfectly, more complex musical arrangements were deemed necessary, with guest viola, trumpet and mandolin accompanists providing greater texture on a collection of songs discernibly more sombre and less optimistic than before. In 1993 DiFranco travelled to Santa Cruz, California, as audiences began to warm to her startling material and pugnacious delivery. In the same year Puddle Dive spent 10 weeks in the college charts. This new suite of songs featured several celebrated collaborators, including Mary Ramsey (from John And Mary) on violin, Rory McLeod on harmonica, and Ann Rabson (from Saffire - The Uppity Blueswomen) on piano. DiFranco’s focus had not shifted much, but herein she further refined her approach without compromising either the integrity or intensity of earlier compositions. The self-produced Dilate was a more rock-orientated album that at times came across as a parody of her own style. Her collaboration with folk legend Utah Phillips on 1996’s The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere revealed DiFranco to be a sympathetic collaborator, providing backing to his offbeat lyrics. Living In Clip, a double live set, was followed by Little Plastic Castle, a studio album that featured DiFranco at her eclectic best on contrasting tracks such as ‘Gravel’ and ‘Pulse’. In a prolific 1999, DiFranco released two new solo albums and another collaborative effort with Phillips. Revelling/Reckoning, a sprawling, musically diverse 29-track double set released in 2001, was held together by the force of DiFranco’s personality and the clarity of her lyrical vision.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.
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23 September 1970, Buffalo, New York State, USA. Prolific feminist singer-songwriter Ani (pronounced Ah-nee) DiFranco began performing at the age of nine, establishing her independence by living on her own from the age of 15 onwards. She released her initial recordings on her own Righteous Babe Records in 1990, quickly cultivating an identity through her visual appearance (piercings, dyed or shorn hair) that had little to do with precursors such as Joan Baez. After attending art school in her native Buffalo, DiFranco moved to New York City and the New School for Social Research. In the evenings she played sets at local bars, writing songs that soon identified her as a precocious talent. Literate, ebullient and a natural live performer, she quickly won converts drawn equally from folk and rock audiences. Her debut album confirmed this promise, its lyrics informed by feminist theory but never subsumed by rhetoric or preciousness. As she told Billboard magazine in 1995: ‘It’s not like I have an agenda in my music. It’s just that to me, the world is political. Politics is music - is life! That’s the lens I look through.’