There have been two musical landmarks in my life so far: The Beatles, who came to me when I was just waking up to myself & to music. And Ani Difranco, who came to me when I hit my rock bottom.

So, when I write about Ani, it’s more than personal.

Ani Difranco is a tiny, fierce woman who travels (or did, before her baby) the length & breadth of the US with her guitar and her little band. She is part poet, part guitar-picking genius and is often described as a female Bob Dylan. She writes intensely personal songs – sometimes angry, sometimes deeply intimate, always confessional & brutally honest. Difranco defines the term ‘Independent Artist’, having built her reputation on sheer grit, relentless touring and the most remarkable songwriting I’ve ever experienced. She has consistently refused to sign with big, corporate record labels. (And that’s why most of the links I’ve included in this post have poor audio – Ani didn’t quite go down the MTV route.)

I was first introduced to Ani by the song Self Evident. Which is not really a song in many parts. A track that runs over 9 minutes, it is Ani’s poetic, rage-laden, extremely disturbing and gut-wrenching telling of 9/11. I was struck by her words, her voice brimming with emotion and she seemed to speak in tongues that I understood. I had never heard a woman speak her mind so well. (Sitting here now, writing this, I feel her influence bearing down on me. I wouldn’t have had the courage to be as honest as I can in my writing, if I hadn’t heard her.)

Growing up, as most music-loving women my age did, with predominantly male music with male themes & sensibilities, listening to Ani was such a relief. My IQ, (“When I was 13 years old/ I woke up one morning/ Thighs covered in blood/ Like a war/Like a warning/ That I live in a breakable takeable body/ An ever-increasingly valuable body”)  Gratitude ( “What does my body have to do/ With my gratitude?) and  32 Flavors (“I am a poster girl with no poster/ I am 32 flavors and then some”).

On tracks like Both Hands and You Had Time, Ani let us into her heart, her relationships & insecurities. The side of her that’s not raging (Difranco is often considered an ‘activist’ singer-songwriter because of her strongly political tracks, often dealing with issues of gender & sexuality). It was in these tracks that I found solace when everything was turning to shit around me. It was in listening to her that I knew it was ok to feel what I was feeling. There were no guarantees that things would get better, but at least I wasn’t alone. I played Grey ( “You walk through my walls/ Like a ghost on TV/ You penetrate me”) a lot in those days…

2005-2006 was a tough year. I spent most of it in an alcohol & pot-induced haze, hanging with destructive people, numb to everything. Ani Difranco’s music was the only thing that seemed to gently (and sometimes not so gently) make its way in. I guess it would be dramatic to say that her music saved me from myself…but it would also be true. Her songs were the hand held out for me to grab so I could pull myself out of the deep.

In hindsight, I think it’s because Ani expressed rage but never said ‘fuck the world’, she was biting in her criticism of society but always holding herself as responsible for the fate of the world as those she hauled up in her songs. Her humour was never at the cost of another, her rebellion never without a cause. It was the healthiest lesson in self-expression I could have received at that time.

In 2007, once I’d retrieved my head from my ass and weeded out the rubbish in my life, I had an opportunity to visit the US. I went online and scoured the net for Difranco’s tour dates, praying that she’d be performing somewhere on the East Coast in July-August. And she was, in Brooklyn, except it was 2 days before I was scheduled to land at Newark. I busted Rs.4,000 changing my ticket just so I could catch her live.

On the designated day, horribly jet-lagged and not quite in my senses, I made the trek from New Jersey to Brooklyn accompanied by a dear friend of mine, who I’d dragged along because the subway scared me. Bandshell was filling up with these enormous ladies (at first we were a bit confused, then we realised that Ani has a huge lesbian fanbase….and not to stereotype this demographic but a majority of the women we saw at the venue were massive, with crew-cuts and very intimidating), many of whom assumed that my friend and I were a couple (we did nothing to disabuse them of this assumption).

And then Ani came on. Everything became blurry. I think I went into some kind of shock. I couldn’t process that this woman was her. That this was the Ani, whose words I’d heard so incessantly that they were permanently memorexed in my brain. I tried clicking snaps, recording her on my cellphone and then I gave up. I just let her sing and tried to soak up every second of it I could. It was one of the most emotional moments of my life and I could hardly stand it. Slowly, we started chatting with the girls around us. One couple had come from Canada to hear Ani but S & I beat ’em all. “From India??!?” That was quite a feat.

When the concert was over, a bunch of us gathered around the backstage area. I tried to do the whole ‘I have come all the way from India just to see Ani’ routine but no dice. She’d just had her baby and wanted to get straight to her. At the time I was sorely disappointed but today, looking back, I’m glad she didn’t let us in. It’s consistent with what Ani stands for, in my mind.

Music, lyrics, integrity. Nothing more, nothing less.