[Text by Rebekah Dillon; appears in the Jan. 30 edition of the Ithaca Times]
Ani DiFranco requires little introduction. A poet, prolific musician, activist, feminist, mother, entrepreneur, and iconic “little folksinger,” she has been inciting audiences for two decades, with her brazenly honest lyrics and innovative musical style.
At nineteen, Ani ventured to New York City to attend The New School, where she took poetry classes with renowned spoken-word artist, Sekou Sundiata, and began to electrify audiences with her genre-defying guitar and vocals. Shortly thereafter, in response to the beckoning by corporate record labels, she created her own label in her hometown, Buffalo.
Since 1990, DiFranco has produced all 19 of her albums, as well as invited other avant-garde musicians to record under her Righteous Babe Records label. Her style has evolved from solo voice and guitar to intricate collaborations with horns and strings, and back again to simpler three-piece sets. She has overseen a decade-long community development project in Buffalo, renovating a collapsing cathedral into a state of the art venue dubbed Babeville. In the past year, DiFranco released her first-ever career-retrospective album, Canon, on which are 36 hand-picked songs. In tandem with Canon, Seven Stories Press published Verses, her first book of poetry. She has also been spending a bit less time on the road these days, in order to spend more time with her one-year-old daughter, Petah Lucia.
This Saturday, Feb. 2, equipped with a new band and lots of the raw Righteous Babe spirit that we love, DiFranco is sure to inspire, educate, and empower the State Theatre audience.
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Ithaca Times: Are you touring for Canon right now?
Ani DiFranco: Well, I’m touring because that’s what I do. [Laughs] I sort of see my life as being one of a working musician, a folksinger. Canon is my latest release, but I tour whether or not I have something new out there on the shelf.
IT: With Canon, you look back at a 20 year artistic and personal evolution. What are you doing now, and what are you looking forward to, musically?
DiFranco: Well, I am out with a new band these days, which I’m loving. And actually they made their first appearance on record with the Canon retrospective. I re-recorded about five old songs just to give that retrospective a freshness, some vitality, so that it was more than a mixed tape. So the band that I recorded with is out on the road with me now, and we are definitely becoming more of a band every night. I’m really excited to have a new group of people to make music with.
IT: You have an incredible knack for making art out of painful experiences. Is that something you had to learn, or to teach yourself?
DiFranco: Well, I guess I had to learn to be brave about it, you know, and not worry about exposing myself and my experience. I discovered pretty early on that if you do so you make many more connections than you do enemies. I think it was just a mechanism that I discovered very early in life. As a kid, art and self-expression were ways that I kept myself sane. My childhood was a rocky one, so making art was my saving grace. I look at, for instance, the public education system these days. The minute the budget is in crisis they start slashing art programs and I think that’s the last thing you should cut. In terms of economic crisis, when kids are struggling along with the rest of us, they need to express themselves. This is something I that feel very strongly about.
One of the things that my friend and teacher Sekou taught me in life is that making poetry is not writing in long skinny columns, but it is a way of seeing. And trying to step back and look at the world very simply, with your animal eyes, is a way of reconnecting with essential truths. I guess it is that poet’s eye that helps me try to stay in touch with the true meaning of my life.
IT: In Reprieve, you defy my understanding of feminism by saying “Feminism ain’t about equality, it’s about reprieve.” The word “reprieve” has a quite different spirit than the ’80s and ’90s fighting-for-equality spirit of feminism.
DiFranco: Right. I think that that’s where feminism had to start, you know. It’s literally trying to empower women to be in control of their own lives, and to have equal opportunities in society. But as I say, in the 21st Century we should have by now evolved our idea of feminism to realize that there is no such thing as peace within patriarchy, because patriarchy is inherently violent. [Laughs] In order to have peace in nature, in a body, in a political system, in an eco-system, you need balance. And patriarchy is inherently imbalanced, so I think we need to go back to the fundamentals of our human society and address things like patriarchy, through feminism, which both men and women can embody, and begin to repair all the manifestations from the source.
IT: You have been the iconic super-feminist, the in-your-face artist, giving a voice to and empowering a whole generation of young women, frustrated with things they could not define. Who is your audience now, and has it changed from the loyal fan base of 10 years ago?
DiFranco: Well, yes and no. I think that there are different elements in my audience now. One is the somewhat more grown-up, been around for a long time, and expanded audience of yore. There are the 50-year-old men with their daughters and, you know, male, female, old, young. And then there’s the same contingent that you were talking about, I think. Young women, who are becoming themselves and discover my music in that way that you referred to — as a stepping stone, to help them rise to the occasion of their own self. So the audience in the background is quite expanded, and then down front in the mosh pit are those same young women. [Laughs]
IT: [Laughs] Yeah. Have your goals changed with your music, in regards to who you’re trying to reach or what you’re trying to say?
DiFranco: No, I don’t imagine so. I think I try to keep my goals fairly close to home and humble. I think that basically I’m just trying to become myself through my music [laughs], rather than be so ambitious as to ‘change the world!’ or ’save somebody else.’ I think that it’s often a good idea with art to just focus on whatever your immediate transformation is about and not worry and not calculate too much what other people will or won’t get out of it.
IT: Can you tell me about Babeville? It’s Righteous Babe Records’ newly renovated art venue in Buffalo, is that right?
DiFranco: Yes. It’s a beautiful space and it’s just starting to come alive after many many years of renovation. The upstairs venue is pretty finished, but there’s gonna be a smaller venue down in the basement that is still being worked on. Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center is housed under our roof now and they have a gallery. They’re infamous in the western New York community for their avant-garde art. They also have a theater, and so it’s really a vibrant arts center now in what was slated to be a parking lot. [Laughs]
IT: That’s good to hear. I wonder, now on a more personal note, how in the last year, your artistic life has changed with motherhood.
DiFranco: [Pauses] Well, [Petah] is slowing down my process, first of all, you know. [Laughs] I can’t just dedicate whatever extended hours I want to writing or recording or doing my thing, but I’m happy about that. I think that what I needed was to slow down in my process, and take more time with the creation of records for instance, or take more time to just live my life and be with the people I love as opposed to working every last moment away. So she’s teaching me how to chill out. [Laughs] And of course, having a baby, as any parent knows, is exhausting, but at the same time that she’s depriving me of sleep, she’s also inspiring me to think about things I’ve never thought about, and to exist in the world in a slightly new way.
IT: Are there things you’ve been surprised about, or expectations surpassed, with having a baby?
DiFranco: Well, geez, I think I didn’t come with a lot of expectations. I have an instinct not to do that in life, which serves me well. [Laughs] I’ll tell you what, though, childbirth knocked the wind out of me. I was shocked, I guess by how monumental and difficult that was. It sounds silly to say. It’s the most ass-kicking thing a person will ever attempt to do.
I think I really had a sense with myself of invincibility and super-human strength, that I carry around with me subliminally in order to make me think I can do things that people say I can’t do, and then when it came to giving birth, I got kicked in the ass. [Laughs] I mean, when she finally came out, and started breathing air in this world I felt like I was reborn as a feminist once again [laughs], I’ll tell you. And yeah, it definitely seems that wherever your edge is as a woman, it will push you over. [Laughs]
IT: [Laughs] Well, it sounds like you’re in a really solid and hopeful place with Petah right now, and with your music. It’s good to hear, and we’re really excited to see you.
DiFranco: Thank you, for everything. And I look forward to coming to Ithaca.
Ani DiFranco will perform at the State Theatre this Saturday, Feb. 2. The State Theatre is located on 107 W. State St. For tickets, (607) 27-STATE.