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b. 23 September 1970, Buffalo,
New York State, USA. Prolific 90s 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 which 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."
Her 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-oriented 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 which 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.
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