Anything but the grrrrrl

Sojourners Magazine, May/Jun 2002

An interview with Musician Ani DiFranco--founder of Righteous Babe Records and folk-punk troubadour "the secular Left.

Ani DiFranco began her professional career when she was 9 years old, singing and playing Beatles songs to audiences in her hometown of Buffalo, New York. She wrote her first song at 14. Moved out on her own at IS. When she recorded her first album, at age 20, she had already composed more than 100 songs. DiFranco's blue-collar parents exposed her to folk music. Their home was a haven for touring musicians.

By 1991 she started her own record label-Righteous Babe Records. In the past 10 years, DiFranco has been named one of VH I's "100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll," had four Grammy nominations, produced 13 albums, created an independent gold album, and just released her new double disc Reveling/Reckoning. This groundbreaking musician sat down in Chicago this winter with Mennonite pastor Rocky Kidd to discuss God, activism, and music. -The Editors

Rocky Kidd: You have been called one of the leading cultural voices for progressive politics in America today. Do you feel a sense of responsibility to help politically inform the young people who are really into your music or to help raise their social consciousness? Ani DiFranco: Well, sure. But that's not a responsibility that I feel because I'm a performer or a songwriter or whatever it is that I am. I feel that responsibility as a human being. When I look at my job and the platforms that I stand on, and the microphone that I get to speak into, I don't see that as a responsibility so much as an opportunity to create change in an imperfect world. We all share that responsibility-I just have a good job for making some noise.

Kidd: What is your personal spirituality? Do you have any identification with an organized institutional-type church or faith?

DiFranco: No relationship with any organized religion in my life, not even growing up-except that in the summers I would spend a lot of time with all of my cousins, and my family was all around. We used to have our own sort of "church services" where a different member of the family every week would speak and talk about travels or sing songs. But that was about it. I think responsibility to God is a responsibility to each other and to every living thing on the planet. I guess my spirituality is very tactile.

Kidd: What type of issues and causes do you and the Righteous Babe Foundation support?

DiFranco: One of the major things that we're involved in is the fight against capital punishment. I believe that murder is murder, whether done by an individual or the state. We work with an organization down in Atlanta called the Southern Center for Human Rights. For the past three years, Righteous Babe has sponsored a lawyer down there.

We do benefit shows. In fact, in two days we're doing a show at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. And the college isn't paying me-the wealthy father of a female student at the college is. He's a big fan and hired me to play at the school. We said, "Okay, sir, but we also want $25,000 to go to the charity of our choice." So not only is he going to pay all of our day's salary, but $25,000 is going to go to the Southern Center for Human Rights. It's nice to be able to maneuver things like that.

Kidd: On one of your older albums, To the Teeth, you have some very interesting lyrics. "Open fire on Hollywood/open fire on MTV/open fire on NBC, CBS, and ABC/open fire on the NRA/and all the lies they told us along the way." Could you talk about what you're saying in the lyrics and about your commitment to nonviolence?

DiFranco: Of course the verse in that song is metaphoric. The "open fire" is verbal. I'm saying we need to stop demonizing the point man. Behind every gun-flailing rapper, behind every violent record, there is a huge corporate record company with a lot of nice, pleasant white guys in suits who live in suburbs and wouldn't dream of saying, "I'm going to pop my dad and dah-dah-dah." But they're the ones who are promoting, selling, and making countless amounts of dollars off of violent messages like that.

Kidd: Forbes, Financial News Network, The New York Times: all have heralded you as the "young entrepreneur" for your success in making money and higher profit margins. What are your feelings about that given your perspective on corporatism and commodification?

DiFranco: On one hand, I want to let it be known that you can be independent, that you can create a career in music without ever selling a song to an advertisement-ever. The irony is that my whole point for doing everything the way I've done it is that I'm not acting like a businessperson. My priorities are politics and art and people. That is why I've stayed away from the major record companies. So it wasn't some kind of brilliant 15-year business plan. Kidd: You are very successful, though-four Grammy nominations; included in the top 100 women of rock. In light of all that, your commitment to Buffalo, New York, is to be commended. What motivates you to root Righteous Babe there?