Though this was my fifth or sixth time to see Ani DiFranco in concert, it moved me as much as if it were the first time: her fast and fierce guitar stylings, her audience engagement, her heart-felt expressions while performing, her amazing toned and tiny physique, and her articulate and moving lyrics. During her first couple of songs, when her guitar-shredding energy and happy glow lit up the venue, I was literally moved to tears by my own joy at being immersed in such musical beauty.
And to top it all off, another musician whom I admire greatly performed before Ani: Pieta Brown. (To see an interview with Pieta from our Love and Black History Month issue, click The Soul of Pieta Brown.) Pieta sang and played acoustic guitar alongside her friend, Bo Ramsey, who played the electric guitar leads. The two were raw and passionate, slow and heady. Though she has three albums to speak of, her performance was focused on the music only and she never once self-promoted. When Ani later in the night acknowledged her own birthday, she said that her best gift was getting to see Pieta and Bo perform, and that it made her cry “tears of relief to hear their music.”
And hearing Ani brought to my eyes tears of relief as well.
Though Ani played a variety of songs from former records, I was happy to hear several from one of my favorite of her albums, Little Plastic Castle (such as “Little Plastic Castle,” “As Is,” and “Swandive.”) And though most audiences, myself included, often get bored hearing new songs for the first time at shows, Ani performed several from her new album Red Letter Year (which debuted the day after the concert) and we ate them up. But perhaps that’s because Ani is twice as good live as she is recorded, and her enunciation of lyrics combined with her emotion and musical skill and prowess make almost anything she performs interesting. Many of her new songs are influenced by her recent beginnings at motherhood, and she introduced one of the new songs, Landing Gear, by saying “This is a song actually set in labor and I want to send it out to all the moms” (“For someone who aint even here yet, look how much the world loves you…your piñata is torn, it’s time to be born…you’re gonna love this world if it’s the last thing I do….”).
Like so many other of her shows, various women in the crown shouted their love to Ani and she occasionally shouted it back (other times she made jokes). And when she ended her set, we all went wild, stamping our feet like a herd of angry elephants, until she came back and played three last songs for the night, and thanked us for “listening very graciously.”
Some of the lines that stood out from her new songs were as follows:
“Leave me here, surrounded by everything that’s real, away from all the boundaries of this digital ordeal….” from The Atom
“…I cannot support the troops because every one of them is being duped….” from Alla This
“…make insecurity into a full-time job, make insecurity into an art…love is all over the place, there’s nothing wrong with your face….” from Present/Infant
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