Ani DiFranco is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, generally recognized as a feminist icon and for being active in social and political spheres ("leftist").
A bit of bio
- Much more thorough details on Ani's bio is available on wikipedia.
Ani was born Angela Marie Difranco on Sept. 23, 1970, in Buffalo, New York. Ani began performing at an early age (nine), and, at 18 years old, started her own record company, Righteous Babe Records. She released her own first album ("Ani DiFranco") the following winter (1990), and has released all of her own albums since, at least one every year, with the exception of 2000. In addition, Righteous Babe Records (RBR) has taken on a number of additional artists, such as Utah Phillips, and Hamel on Trial. Ani and the other righteous babes also use RBR as a vehicle for social and political action, tackling a wide range of issues from abortion, to the death penalty.
Preggers
In July, 2006, Ani announced that she was 12 weeks pregnant. Do the math (this was on July 21st, 40 weeks typical gestation), and Ani should be expecting sometime around the end of February. The father is Mike Napolitano, the producer from her latest album, Reprieve, and she later announced that the baby will be a girl. By all accounts, Ani is elated about the situation. At her concert at Orpheum theater in Boston on Friday, November 11, 2006, Ani spoke a bit about her pregnancy, and her relationship with Napolitano, which is apparently going quite nicely as well. She mentioned that her "baby's daddy" is being very helpful and sweet, and she performed a "new" song in progress (part of her new effort to perform "happier" songs), which basically breaks down to a love song for Napolitano.
Music
Ani's music is generally described a folk or, more often, folk rock, though to bind her to these categories is a great oversimplification. Over the years, Ani has continued to both develop and stretch her musical style; from the guitar-centric, rhythm-driven, early days of her self titled release in 1990, to her more recent releases like Knuckle Down(2005) and Reprieve(2006) which enjoy a much more melodic sound and incorporates soulful elements of blues, jazz, and funk.
