No’am Newman wrote this review.
If you’re looking for a bare bones biography about the Buffalo, New York, singer songwriter Ani DiFranco, then her website is a good place to start. But if you’re looking for something deeper, then Ani DiFranco: Righteous Babe is the book to read. Whereas DiFranco’s online biography runs to two screens, in this tripartite book Raffaele Quirino has collected 70 pages of biography, entitled ‘Names and Dates and Times’, which go into far greater depth than any website could. Although these pages contain no actual interviews with DiFranco, the biographical material (most of it more than explicit) has been culled from many magazine articles and interviews.
This is not just a biography, for in the second part of this 170-page book (entitled ‘The Slant’) author Quirino tries to explain DiFranco’s attitude to life, as expounded in her lyrics. Whilst some artists have no autobiography whatsoever in their lyrics, and others have small doses, hidden as other people’s stories, DiFranco freely exposes her heart in her words, and so their deconstruction provides a different view of DiFranco’s life. Far be it from me to divulge the contents of those pages, but they’re well worth reading to any AniFans. A very illuminating section is the interviews which Quirino conducts with a few young fans, which go some way towards explaining why some of her fans are so dedicated in their appreciation.
To round things off, the third section of the book, entitled ‘Living In Sound Clip’ (after the title of DiFranco’s live album) goes through each of DiFranco’s releases, discussing both the lyrics and the music (which until this section seems to have been only the vehicle by which DiFranco can get her message across). Whilst the criticism might be considered somewhat perfunctory, it’s obvious that Quirino is writing out of love and admiration, and not simply filling out the pages.
The book opens with an open letter which DiFranco wrote to Ms magazine in 1997, in which she responds to being listed as one of ’21 feminists for the 21st century.’ This letter deals mainly with the business side of DiFranco (she runs a successful independent record company), which to the unaware would make her a prosperous entrepreneur.
To balance the book out, the closing pages are an epilogue entitled ‘Come away from it,’ which begins “So, what did I learn in the process of unraveling the facts of Ani DiFranco’s life, reading her opinions and dissecting virtually every word she ever wrote and every note she ever played?” Quirino discloses his own feelings about the subject, which are more than revealing, and show in no small amount his honesty and integrity regarding his writing.
I confess that I had never heard a note of Ani DiFranco’s music before reading this book; the enthusiasm of the writing convinced me that it would be worth my while to correct that (even though I can hardly be considered to be part of DiFranco’s natural audience). In doing so, I have to say that the book achieved its goals by informing me, and by persuading me to listen. Thus I can easily recommend it to anyone who follows contemporary singers or female musicians.
Ani’s site is actually a good site, which appears to have been put up recently; it contains the lyrics to all her songs, a discography, pictures and a show list. Well worth investigating.
(Quarry Music Books, 2000)
