Ani DiFranco - folk singer - Interview

Q: You're singing about a poor black man. That's the "you" of the chorus, the way I took it.

DiFranco: I was wondering if people would hear it that way. In a sense, you could interpret it that way. But the "you" in the chorus is the country. I'm saying, look at what they've done to you as in us, as in it, as in the promise of America. Too bad it's a system built on the fundamentals of racism and classism, et cetera, et cetera.

Q: You've consistently gone your own way. That's your trademark. You started up Righteous Babe, and kept the music execs at bay. Are they still knocking, or have they gotten the message?

DiFranco: I think they've gotten the message, yeah: Indie girl won't sign.

Q: Is that option open to other artists?

DiFranco: Absolutely. That's the thing about folk music; many of them do do that. This whole idea of making albums on your own and selling them at your shows and then maybe using independent distribution if you can get to that level, which is a tough one to achieve, but such a good and necessary thing for remaining independent. There are many, many people who do that. It's certainly not an idea that I came up with at all in any way, and it is a very common thing in the folk world.

But maybe the difference is a lot of people perceive it as a means to an end: You're independent because you can't get a major label deal or you're on the way to the big deal, whereas for me it's an end in itself, and there is a lot of political thought that goes behind that decision for me.

Q: What is some of that?

DiFranco: Well, I mean, basically, I have a real problem with the priorities of business. And especially the bigger the business gets, the more those priorities are contrary to the interests of communities, to the interests of people, to the interests of art. In this whole music industry of marrying business and art, almost always the art suffers.

Q: How has the consolidation in the communications industry--five companies owning something like 80 percent of the music--affected the art of music?

DiFranco: On all levels of the industry, you have power consolidation. You have corporate takeovers of not just record companies where all the intermediary companies are being bought up and all of the little artists are being dropped--you also have these mergings of production companies. In terms of touring, there are these huge promotion companies that also own venues now and also now are affiliated with record companies and also now are merging with radio station conglomerates. And not only that, they are connected with billboard companies. So you have complete vertical integration of, and corporate control over, the music industry. It's all becoming very controlled: not only whose records do people know about, but what's on the radio, and what shows do people go to.

It's really quite terrifying on the one side, and really quite hopeful on the other because the possibilities that I am sort of trying to investigate for being independent and for counteracting that system are more and more there. People pushing the possibilities of being independent, and making music, and making a living, having a job. I'm sort of known for that only because I've taken it somewhat further than a lot of people have taken it. You know, just technology being more accessible for producing CDs. I remember when I first started making records, making a CD was a bit of a stretch. It was too expensive, too mysterious, but now anyone can make a CD. You can make them in your homes.