In Awe of Ani

It was near the middle of the interview when it happened.
“Not to get all political about it,” she began apologetically.
This is where I interrupt her. “With all due respect, Ani, that’s what you do best.”
This is where I stop being a journalist and become a fan.
Ani DiFranco laughs with me and for a minute, we are in the same space, instead of me in my friend’s apartment in Fargo and Ani in a New Orleans studio. For a minute, my cell phone becomes a mere accessory to my experience with a musical superstar.
It’s not often that you get to speak to one of your idols. What do you ask the person about, the person who helped usher you into being comfortable with your body, sexuality and feminist ideology?

Folk operas, of course.

On top of parenting a two-year-old girl, collaborating on new releases on her record label, and maintaining her sense of political activism in an Obama-struck world, Ani said she’s also been busy recording her part in an opera that will be released on Righteous Babe Records, which has been her musical outlet for 20 years.

“It’s a huge project with a whole lot of people involved,” she said. The roster includes Bon Iver, Greg Brown, and opera creator 25-year-old Anaïs Mitchell.
It’s not the first time that Ani has put herself on the frontlines for a cohort’s creative endeavors.
She has also performed in a musical based on the cult classic “Hothead Paisan,” a graphic novel about a “homicidal lesbian terrorist.” That gem was pulled off after only four days of full rehearsals at the Michigan Womyn’s Festival in 2004. Five years later, Ani is reuniting with the musical’s creator, Animal Prufrock, formerly of the riot grrl duo Bitch and Animal, wrapping up Animal’s first solo project.

“She’s one of my best friends in the world,” Ani said. “It’s super cool to help her out with her scene. She’s got these beautiful, tender, yet totally in-your-face radical songs.”

Ani is full of good words for her friends, many of whom show up as guests in her songs or on the stage. It is that camaraderie that keeps her going, more than two decades before she first stepped in front of a microphone.

“I certainly have learned things along the way,” she said. “It’d be hard to quantify that in a few sentences. The spirit of the girl behind these songs is still pretty much the same, but the tone in which she sings has shifted a lot. As I get older, I think I have more humility. I was very self-effacing when I was young - almost excruciatingly so - and now I am more genuinely humble.”
She attributes some of that humility to the birth of her daughter.
“As another parent described it to me, it’s heavy lifting,” Ani said. “My feminism was really reborn with my child. The whole act of being pregnant and then giving birth was like, ‘Holy shit!’ A pregnant woman looks like she is simply sitting on a couch but she’s building a skyscraper, that’s the amount of energy that goes into creating another soul.”
There is a comfortable parallel here. For Ani, creating music has been a force she has learned to reckon with, to hold gently to her breast, to protect and nurture as it develops before her. In that sense, she has been been a parent long before Petah Lucia DiFranco Napolitano came along; long before she met her partner Mike Napolitano.
Being a songwriter is being a storyteller. It is being present in the moment. It is being one with the world and the expectant faces before her.

“I am just simply trying to stay awake in this world and be accountable on whatever level and in whatever moment,” Ani said. “I’m being accountable to the song at hand, accountable to my society, accountable in a political moment. It’s about learning to try and participate.”

An active Dennis Kucinich supporter in both 2004 and 2008 Presidential elections, Ani has kept a strong foothold in the political arena. She opines on war and poverty, race and environmentalism. As a resident of New Orleans, she witnessed firsthand the discouraging lethargy in which bureaucracy trumps public interest. Although she has spoken publicly about her frustration with the government’s inaction with the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, she linked it to Fargo’s devastating floods, expressing sympathy and concern for this community.

“When Katrina hit, we really saw what happens when you defund public entities,” she said. “If there are completely incompetent cronies at the helm, it can be completely devastating to people’s lives. I think we should be fighting to get all that money we can to build the levies and infrastructure we need.”

The passion in her voice causes me to hesitate. Once again, my demeanor shifts. I am very aware of her breath and mine. I start to ask another question, glancing at the laptop clock and realizing we’ve gone over the agreed time limit. Instead of going back to my interview, I allow myself to feel the rage and passion that she is expressing. As someone who donned waders to stomp in flooded basements, as someone who watched her friends plead for their homes, I felt sick with anger in March when the floodwaters came, washing over the banks of the Red River.

This emotion was understood. This was a shared experience between a musical superstar and her fan. So I began offering my own assessments of the government’s response to our natural disaster, not holding back as I began my own political diatribe. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be getting so political,” I said, chagrined at myself for slipping from journalist to disenfranchised citizen.

This is where she interrupts me.

“With all due respect, Kim, you are one righteous babe.”

I laugh with Ani Difranco again, surprised at how quickly she can put me at ease. Then she tells me that she is excited to visit Fargo, a town she’s been to a few times, but not for a few years. And she’s content being the same person she’s always been; a songwriter, a musician, and, maybe more to the point, simply a human being.

“My motivation for being here is still the same,” she said. “I’m still trying to connect with whoever I can, in the pursuit of social justice and understanding.”

Ani will be at the Fargo Theatre on Sept. 18. Tickets are available at the theater box office.

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