Ani DiFranco

Angela Maria DiFranco, known professionally as Ani DiFranco, was born on September 23, 1970, in Buffalo, New York, to Elizabeth Ross 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 began playing Beatles covers at local bars alongside her guitar teacher, Michael Meldrum, at age nine, and was writing her own songs by fourteen, performing them at bars and coffee houses throughout her teens. She graduated from the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts at sixteen and attended classes at Buffalo State College. Having become an emancipated minor at fifteen, she was living independently by that point.

At nineteen, DiFranco founded Righteous Babe Records in 1989, and 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 became a friend and mentor. She toured steadily for the following fifteen years, pausing only to record, and her appearances at Canadian folk festivals and progressively larger venues reflected her growing presence on the North American folk and roots scene. Throughout the early and mid-1990s she toured both solo and as a duo with Canadian drummer Andy Stochansky. In September 1995, DiFranco performed at a concert at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, inaugurating the opening of the Woody Guthrie Archives in New York City. She subsequently released a recording of the concert, Til We Outnumber Em, on Righteous Babe, with all proceeds directed to the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum educational department. The concert featured artists including Billy Bragg, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Arlo Guthrie, the Indigo Girls, Dave Pirner, Tim Robbins, and Bruce Springsteen.

Bassist Sara Lee joined DiFranco's touring group in 1996, and their live chemistry is documented on the 1997 album Living in Clip. Stochansky departed in 1998 to pursue a solo career, after which a new ensemble comprising Jason Mercer on bass, Julie Wolf on keyboards, and Daren Hahn on drums accompanied DiFranco on tour through 2002. The 1990s brought DiFranco increased visibility, including cover stories in Spin, Ms., and Magnet, as well as appearances on MTV and VH1. Her recording of the Bacharach and David song "Wishin' and Hopin'" appeared under the opening titles of the film My Best Friend's Wedding, and she guest starred in a 1998 episode of the Fox sitcom King of the Hill, voicing Peggy's feminist guitar teacher, Emily. Beginning in 1999, Righteous Babe Records expanded to release albums by other artists, including Sekou Sundiata, Utah Phillips, Andrew Bird, and Anaïs Mitchell, among others.

On September 11, 2001, DiFranco was in Manhattan and later wrote the poem "Self Evident" about the experience. The poem appeared in the book It's a Free Country: Personal Freedom in America After September 11, and its title became the name of her first poetry collection, released in Italy by Minimum Fax. Her poetry was later collected in Verses, published in the United States by Seven Stories Press, released simultaneously with the two-disc career retrospective Canon on September 11, 2007. DiFranco was also featured as a poet on the HBO series Def Poetry in 2005. Since her 2005 release Knuckle Down, co-produced by Joe Henry, her touring band and recordings have featured bass player Todd Sickafoose along with various drummers including Allison Miller, Andy Borger, Herlin Riley, and Terence Higgins, and percussionist Mike Dillon.

In 2009, DiFranco appeared at Pete Seeger's 90th birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden, performing a revamped version of the 1930s labor anthem "Which Side Are You On?" in a duet with Bruce Cockburn and duetting with Kris Kristofferson on "There's a Hole in the Bucket." She counts Seeger among her mentors. Her 2012 album ¿Which Side Are You On? includes collaborations with Seeger, Ivan Neville, Cyril Neville, Skerik, Adam Levy, Anaïs Mitchell, C. C. Adcock, and New Orleans-based horn players associated with groups including Galactic, Bonerama, and Rebirth Brass Band. She released her eighteenth album, Allergic to Water, in 2014, followed by her nineteenth, Binary, in 2017. In 2021 she released Revolutionary Love, an album largely inspired by Valarie Kaur's book See No Stranger. Across her career DiFranco has released more than twenty albums, all on Righteous Babe Records. Her music has been classified as folk rock and alternative rock, with additional influences from punk, funk, hip hop, and jazz.

On May 7, 2019, DiFranco published a memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, through Viking Books, which reached The New York Times Best Seller list. On February 9, 2024, she made her Broadway debut in Hadestown, playing the role of Persephone, a character she had previously voiced on the concept album of the same name.

DiFranco supports numerous social and political causes through benefit concerts, benefit album appearances, and speaking engagements. Through the Righteous Babe Foundation, she has backed grassroots organizations supporting causes including abortion rights and LGBTQ visibility. In 1998, she married sound engineer Andrew Gilchrist in a Unitarian Universalist ceremony in Canada; the two divorced in 2003. She later married producer Mike Napolitano in 2009. DiFranco gave birth to her first child, a daughter, at her Buffalo home in January 2007, and her second child in April 2013.