Ani DiFranco

DiFranco supports many social and political movements by performing benefit concerts, appearing on benefit albums and speaking at rallies. Through the Righteous Babe Foundation, DiFranco has backed grassroots cultural and political organizations supporting causes including abortion rights and LGBT visibility. She counts American folk singer and songwriter Pete Seeger among her mentors.^[8]


DiFranco released a memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, on May 7, 2019, via Viking Books^[9] and made The New York Times Best Seller list.^[10]


On February 9, 2024, DiFranco made her Broadway debut in Hadestown as Persephone, reprising the role she played in the concept album of the same name.^[11]

Early life and education

DiFranco was born in Buffalo, New York,^[12] on September 23, 1970, the daughter of Elizabeth (Ross) and Dante Americo DiFranco, who had met while attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.^[13][14] Her father was of Italian descent, and her mother was from Montreal.^[15] DiFranco started playing Beatles covers at local bars and busking with her guitar teacher, Michael Meldrum,^[16] at the age of nine. By 14 she was writing her own songs. She played them at bars and coffee houses throughout her teens. DiFranco graduated from the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts high school at 16 and began attending classes at Buffalo State College. She was living by herself, having moved out of her mother's apartment after she became an emancipated minor when she was 15.^[17]

Activism

From the earliest days of her career, DiFranco has lent her voice and her name to a broad range of social movements, performing benefit concerts, appearing on benefit albums, speaking at rallies, and offering info table space to organizations at her concerts and the virtual equivalent on her website, among other methods and actions. In 1999, she created her own not-for-profit organization; as the Buffalo News has reported, "Through the Righteous Babe Foundation, DiFranco has backed various grassroots cultural and political organizations, supporting causes ranging from abortion rights to gay visibility."^[63]


During the first Gulf War, DiFranco participated in the anti-war movement. In early 1993 she played Pete Seeger's Clearwater Folk Festival for the first time. In 1998, she was a featured performer in the Dead Man Walking benefit concert series^[64] raising money for Sister Helen Prejean's "Not in Our Name" anti-death penalty organization. DiFranco's commitment to opposing the death penalty is longstanding; she has also been a long time supporter of the Southern Center for Human Rights.


During the 2000 U.S. presidential election, she actively supported and voted for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader,^[65][66][67] though in an open letter she made clear that if she lived in a swing state, she would vote for Al Gore to prevent George W. Bush from being elected.^[68]


In 2004, DiFranco visited Burma in order to learn about the Burmese resistance movement and the country's fight for democracy.^[69] During her travels she met with then-detained resistance leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Her song "In The Way" was later featured on For the Lady, a benefit CD that donated all proceeds to the United States Campaign for Burma.^[70]


During the 2004 presidential primaries, she supported liberal, anti-war Democrat Dennis Kucinich, who appeared on stage with her during several of her concerts. After the primary season ended, and John Kerry was the clear Democratic candidate, DiFranco launched a "Vote Dammit!" tour of swing states encouraging audience members to vote.^[71] In 2005, she lobbied Congress against the proliferation of nuclear power in general and the placement of nuclear waste dumps on Indian land in particular.^[72][73] In 2008, she again backed Kucinich in his bid for the presidency.^[74]


In 2002, Righteous Babe Records established the "Aiding Buffalo's Children" program in conjunction with members of the local community to raise funds for Buffalo's public school system. To kick off the program, DiFranco donated "a day's pay"—the performance fee from her concert that year at Shea's Performing Arts Center— to ABC and challenged her fans to do the same. Aiding Buffalo's Children has since been folded into the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo, contributing to a variety of charitable funds.^[75]


In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated DiFranco's newly adopted home town of New Orleans, she collected donations from fans around the world through The Righteous Babe Store website for the Katrina Piano Fund,^[76] helping musicians replace instruments lost in the hurricane, raising over $47,500 for the cause.


In 2010, after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, she performed at the "For Our Coast" benefit concert joining Marianne Faithfull, C. C. Adcock and others at the Acadiana Center for the Arts Theater in Lafayette, raising money for Gulf Aid Acadiana, and the Gulf Aid show with Lenny Kravitz, Mos Def, and others at Mardi Gras World River City in New Orleans, both shows raising money to help protect the wetlands, clean up the coast and to assist the fishermen and their families affected by the spill.^[77]


DiFranco also sits on the board for The Roots of Music,^[78] founded by Rebirth Brass Band drummer Derrick Tabb. The organization provides free marching band instruction to children in the New Orleans area in addition to academic tutoring and mentoring.


DiFranco joined about 500,000 people at the March for Women's Lives in DC in April 2004. As an honored guest she marched in the front row for the three-mile route, along with Margaret Cho, Janeane Garofalo, Whoopi Goldberg, Gloria Steinem and others. Later in the day, Ani played a few songs on the main stage in front of the Capitol, including "Your Next Bold Move".^[79]


Scot Fisher, formerly Righteous Babe label president and DiFranco's manager for many years, has been a longtime advocate of the preservation movement in Buffalo. In 1999, he and DiFranco purchased a decaying church on the verge of demolition in downtown Buffalo and began the lengthy process of restoring it. In 2006, the building opened its doors again, first briefly as "The Church" and then as "Babeville," housing two concert venues, the record label's business office, and Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center.^[80]


DiFranco is also a member of the Toronto-based charity Artists Against Racism for which she participated in a radio PSA.^[81]


In October 2023, DiFranco signed an open letter to Joe Biden, President of the United States, of artists calling for a ceasefire of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.^[82]