She started busking at age 9 and founded her own record label at 18. The singer-songwriter, poet, entrepreneur and campaigner, Ani DiFranco played Glastonbury on Sunday night and plays Dublin on Tuesday night. In between those gigs, she joined Kay Sheehy on Arena.
Glastonbury was the first date on her new tour. She told Kay that she flew in, drove straight there, and "recovered from jetlag on site". Which must be something in the extraordinary surrounds of a festival like Glastonbury.
"It seemed like there were many worlds within the world of Glastonbury."
(Vicar Street ought to be a little bit more manageable, you'd think!) Ani played Play God, a song from her new album, live in studio. She told Kay that "reproductive freedom is not a given in the US, anymore than it is here" (in Ireland). Reproductive freedom is something Ani sees as a civil right in the modern world. "And there's not a lot of songs out there about it and I figured somebody's gotta write it."
"I view patriarchy as an imbalance that affects all people, not just women."
The natural world shows us that imbalance creates turmoil and balance brings peace and when you start from a position of patriarchy, as human society does, then you can't have peace. Instead, you get environmental destruction, perpetual wars, racism, and systems of hierarchy and aggression. Ani views all these things as manifestations of patriarchy in their essence.
"I've been sort of looking more and more at the world as a series of relationships."
Play God comes from Ani's new album, Binary. She explained that the title comes from her notion that the world can be viewed as a series of relationships, from the atomic structure that underlies creation, to the dance of a planet and a star, she believes that "everything is two things".
"The idea of a singularity is something of a fallacy."
Kay wondered whether Ani could trace the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States to the increasing power and influence of our patriarchy. Ani agreed that this was an example of patriarchy run amok, and was also why the creeping rise of fascism in her country was being facilitated.
"The vanguard of the resistance is feminine, is feminist."
From the nature of the resistance, Ani says, you can infer things about the nature of the force you're resisting. And, due to the extraordinary state of politics and political debate in the US, people who had previously been apolitical are beginning to get involved. Ani believes that people are being inspired to get active. And art can and is playing a big part in the resistance.
Ani DiFranco plays Dublin's Vicar Street on Tuesday night and her new album, Binary, is released on Righteous Babe Records.
You can listen back to Arena here
Photo Credit: Melinda Podor/ Getty Images.