Ms. Magazine

November/December 1994

Writing and singing songs so frank you'd swear she's been reading your diary, Ani DiFranco has been toting her guitar across the United States ever since her first solo gig, in a seedy bar at age nine. Now 24, DiFranco rarely sees her New York City apartment, due to her rigorous touring schedule. In the last four years, she's released six self-produced CDs full of unaffected folk songs about being felt up in the subway, falling in love with women and men, getting an abortion, bleeding through her clothes at work...you know, girl stuff. "I want to challenge women to speak up, to believe in the power of their own voices," she says. Maybe that's why DiFranco has legions of intensely loyal fans, despite her rejection of the conventional recording industry: DiFranco is CEO, talent, producer, tour manager, and crew of her own label, Righteous Babe Records.

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