CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Ani DiFranco

American singer-songwriter

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ232462 ↗
Source-derived summary

Angela Maria "Ani" DiFranco (; born September 23, 1970) is an American-Canadian singer-songwriter. She has released more than 20 albums. DiFranco's music has been classified as folk rock and alternative rock, although it has additional influences from punk, funk, hip-hop and jazz. She has released all her albums on her own record label, Righteous Babe.

DiFranco supports many social and political movements by performing benefit concerts, appearing on benefit albums and speaking at rallies. Through the Righteous Babe Foundation, DiFranco has backed grassroots cultural and political organizations supporting causes including abortion rights and LGBTQ visibility. She counts American folk singer and songwriter Pete Seeger among her mentors.

DiFranco released a memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, on May 7, 2019, via Viking Books and made The New York Times Best Seller list.

On February 9, 2024, DiFranco made her Broadway debut in Hadestown as Persephone, reprising the role she played in the concept album of the same name.

Early life and education

DiFranco was born in Buffalo, New York, on September 23, 1970, the daughter of Elizabeth (Ross) and Dante Americo DiFranco, who had met while attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ani DiFranco” is american singer-songwriter. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through DiFranco, American and singer-songwriter, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1970, 2019, 2024—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1970-09-23. For this dossier, DiFranco, American and singer-songwriter is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american singer-songwriter” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q232462. VIAF identifies the subject as 151149106169468491208. The Library of Congress control number is no98085572. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1970, 2019 and 2024.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Ani DiFranco”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Ani DiFranco primary sources, Ani DiFranco archive and DiFranco research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ani DiFranco”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Ani DiFranco” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.