About Ani DiFranco
Angela Maria "Ani" DiFranco is an American-Canadian singer-songwriter. She has released more than 20 albums. DiFranco's music has been classified as folk rock and alternative rock, although it has additional influences from punk, funk, hip hop and jazz. She has released all her albums on her own record label, Righteous Babe.
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.
DiFranco released a memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, on May 7, 2019, via Viking Books and made The New York Times Best Seller list.
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.
DiFranco was born in Buffalo, New York, on September 23, 1970, the daughter of Elizabeth and Dante Americo DiFranco, who had met while attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her father was of Italian descent, and her mother was from Montreal. DiFranco started playing Beatles covers at local bars and busking with her guitar teacher, Michael Meldrum, 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.
DiFranco started her own record company, Righteous Babe Records, in 1989 at age 19. She released her self-titled debut album in the winter of 1990, shortly after relocating to New York City. There, she took poetry classes at The New School, where she met poet Sekou Sundiata, who was to become a friend and mentor. She toured steadily for the next 15 years, pausing only to record albums. Appearances at Canadian folk festivals and increasingly larger venues in the U.S. reflected her increasing popularity on the North American folk and roots scene. Throughout the early and mid-1990s DiFranco toured solo and also as a duo with Canadian drummer Andy Stochansky.
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