an open letter to ms. magazine
commentary by ani difranco
published between 27 january and 23 june 2003
 
advanced notions | volume 1 • number 12
print
 
"The words you choose...are just as important as the decision to speak."
-author unknown
 
published since January 2003 | Advanced Notions (formerly Bonus Writings, a well-received section of patsymooreDOTcom) consists of engrossing 'think pieces' by friends and favorites.

For these pages, artists of varied disciplines are invited to make contributions related to topics they deem noteworthy. We also encourage non-artists to submit musings about Art.

Just contact us: my2cents@patsymoore.com.
 
 
 

 
 
Advanced Notions (various)
formerly patsymooreDOTcoms Bonus Writings; insightful and inciting literature from artists and about art
 
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an insider's look at the art scene and artist life in Amsterdam
 
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journalings of a confirmed writer

 

 
 
November 5, 1997
 
Marcia Ann Gillespie
Editor in Chief
Ms. Magazine
135 W. 50th Street, 16th Floor
New York, NY 10020


So, I'm poring through the 25th anniversary issue of Ms. (on some airplane going somewhere in the amorphous blur that amounts to my life) and I'm finding it endlessly enlightening and stimulating as always, when, whaddaya know, I come across a little picture of little me. I was flattered to be included in that issue's "21 Feminists for the 21st Century" thingybob. I think ya'll are runnin the most bold and babe-olishious magazine around, after all.

'Problem is, I couldn't help but be a little weirded out by the paragraph next to my head that summed up her me-ness and my relationship to the feminist continuum. What got me was that it largely detailed my financial successes and sales statistics. My achievements were represented by the fact that I "make more money per album sold than Hootie and the Blowfish," and that my catalogue sales exceed 3/4 of a million. It was specified that I don't just have my own record company but my own "profitable" record company. Still, the ironic conclusion of the aforementioned blurb is a quote from me insisting "it's not about the money." Why then, I ask myself, must "the money" be the focus of so much of the media that surrounds me? Why can't I escape it, even in the hallowed pages of Ms.?


Firstly, this Hootie and the Blowfish business was not my doing. The LA Times financial section wrote an article about my record label, Righteous Babe Records, in which they raved about the business savvy of a singer (me) who thwarted the corporate overhead by choosing to remain independent, thereby pocketing $4.25 per unit, as opposed to the $1.25 made by Hootie or the $2.00 made by Michael Jackson. This story was then picked up and reprinted by The New York Times, Forbes magazine, the Financial News Network, and (lo and behold) Ms..


So, here I am, publicly morphing into some kinda Fortune 500-young-entrepreneur-from-hell, and all along I thought I was just a folksinger!


OK, it's true. I do make a much larger profit (percentage-wise) than the Hootster. What's even more astounding is that there are thousands of musicians out there who make an even higher profit percentage than me! How many local, musicians are there in your community who play gigs in bars and coffee shops about town? I bet lots of them have made cassettes or CDS which they'll happily sell to you with a personal smile from the edge of the stage or back at the bar after their set. Would you believe these shrewd, profit-minded wheeler-dealers are pocketing a whopping 100% of the profits on the sales of those puppies?! Wait till the Financial News Network gets a whiff of them!


I sell approximately 2.5% of the albums that a Joan Jewelanis Morrisette sells and get about .05% of the airplay royalties, so obviously if it all comes down to dollars and cents, I've led a wholly unremarkable life. Yet I choose relative statistical mediocrity over fame and fortune because I have a bigger purpose in mind. Imagine how strange it must be for a girl who has spent 10 years fighting as hard as she could against the lure of the corporate carrot and the almighty forces of capital, only to be eventually recognized by the power structure as a business pioneer.


But this is, of course, the 21st century, the era of global capitalism, along whose circuits music—Jazz, and many other musics—now travel. So that this obsolete notion of laissez faire capitalism—this notion still informs our ideas about both capitalism and democracy. And it is an obsolete notion.


I have, indeed, sold enough records to open a small office on the half-abandoned main street in the dilapidated urban center of my hometown, Buffalo, New York. I am able to hire 15 or so folks to run and constantly reinvent the place while I drive around and play music for people. I am able to give stimulating business to local printers and manufacturers and to employ the services of independent distributors, promoters, booking agents and publicists. I was able to quit my day job and devote myself to what I love.


And, yes, we are enjoying modest profits these days, affording us the opportunity to reinvest in innumerable political and artistic endeavors. RBR is no Warner Bros.. But it is a going concern and, for me, it is a vehicle for redefining the relationship between art and commerce in my own life. It is a record company which is the product not just of my own imagination, but that of my friend and manager Scot Fisher and of all the people who work there. People who incorporate and coordinate politics, art and media every day into a people-friendly, sub-corporate, woman-informed, queer-happy small business that puts music before rock stardom and ideology before profit.


And me. I'm just a folksinger, not an entrepreneur. My hope is that my music and poetry will be enjoyable and/or meaningful to someone, somewhere, not that I maximize my profit margins. It was 15 years and 11 albums getting to this place of notoriety and, if anything, I think I was happier way back when. Not that I regret any of my decisions, mind you. I'm glad I didn't sign on to the corporate army. I mourn the commodification and homogenization of music by the music industry, and I fear the manufacture of consent by the corporately-controlled media. Last thing I want to do is feed the machine.


I was recently mortified while waiting in the dressing room before one of my own shows. Some putz suddenly takes the stage to announce me and exclaim excitedly that this was my "largest sold-out crowd to date!" "Oh, really?," I'm thinking to myself, "that's interesting...too bad it's not the point." All of my achievements are artistic, as are all of my failures.


That's just the way I see it. Statistical plateau or no. I'll bust ass if 60 people, or 6000, watch me.


I have so much respect for Ms. magazine. If I couldn't pick it up at newsstands, my brain probably would've atrophied by now on some trans-Atlantic flight and I would be lying limp and twitchy in a bed of constant travel, staring blankly into the abyss of the gossip magazines. Ms. is a structure of media wherein women are able to define themselves and articulate, for themselves, those definitions. We wouldn't point to 21 of the feminists moving into the 21st century and define them in terms of "Here's Becky Ballbuster from Iowa City, she's got a great ass and a cute little button nose..." No ma'am. We've gone beyond the limited perceptions of sexism so we should move beyond the language and perspective of the corporate patriarchy. The Financial News Network may be ultimately impressed with me now that I've proven to them that there's a life beyond the auspices of papa Sony, but do I really have to prove this to you?


We have the ability and the opportunity to recognize women not just for the financial successes of their work but for the work itself. We have the facility to judge each other by entirely different criteria than those imposed upon us by the superstructure of society. We have a view which reaches beyond profit margins into poetry, and a vocabulary to articulate the difference.


Thanks for including me, Ms., really. But just promise me one thing—if I drop dead tomorrow, tell me my grave stone won't read:

ani d.
CEO.
 
Please let it read:
 
songwriter
musicmaker
storyteller
freak.
 
Ani DiFranco
 
 
 

In an era when "alternative" has become mainstream and most artists remain "independent" only until they're shown enough money, ANI DiFRANCO is a true maverick. Live performer of over a thousand concerts, founder of her own record label at age nineteen, and producer of eight albums in seven years, DiFranco is not your typical singer-songwriter. She's a fiercely, truly independent musician who has resisted major labels in order to stake out her own artistic ground—on her own terms.


Since 1990, DiFranco has released eight albums on her own label, Buffalo-based Righteous Babe Records. Her first album was a cassette-only release that DiFranco prepared to help secure gigs but eventually sold from both the trunk of her car and the lip of the stage. Although she considered signing with an independent label, the idea of retaining complete control of her music and everything around it appealed to her. Righteous Babe currently employs six people, and DiFranco has sold nearly 400,000 albums.
 
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