When Ani diFranco teases a guitar with a crafty smile, she's a woman to listen out for come what may. Because you never can tell. She's spontaneous combustion in her music and blows dust off archived sounds from anywhere.
The thoroughly modern "Ahh-nee" -- that's how she likes you to say it -- can get the strings shimmering a cascade like a waterfall in bright sunshine, or beat the blues out of the box for a storm.
Those artificial fences among styles? Ani leaps them like a thoroughbred sound-jockey. As for the decades separating some musical forms from their offspring, she seems so oblivious to them that to invite her round is a little present for a friend of mine, an accomplished musician with a few years on me.
For BJ and others who feel lost on my terrain but interested in it, Ani DiFranco's a multiple personality who's integrated all kinds of music into albums that make for a fascinating ensemble.
This self-styled "punk folksinger" -- and that's a loose definition -- is an exemplary phenomenon with whom to start exploring music I write up. There's a chance you'll love hers, navigate your own way back to your boundaries and find you'd like to jump a few fences yourself.
 In Ani, BJ will hear the classical background he's familiar with, recognise aspects of a New York I've never set foot in but seem sometimes to know on first listening, and hear some unexpected and enjoyable shifts on his home ground.
One of my plans for months has been to review 'Knuckle Down', out last January, but to get there I'm listening, several times over, to 'Evolve'.
The title of the earlier record sums up what Ani is consciously engaged in as a person and a musician. On tour and on album, she's extremely eclectic, ready for an adventure with equally accomplished players of all kinds.
If she's not entirely teasing about being a punk folksinger, perhaps she means she's rebellious but open to anyone (as she showed when an arts centre in Michigan, Interlochen last July persuaded a woman they find ever on the move to visit and sit down for a day. That's where I found the look I mentioned).
She soared to mind since BJ, like other people I know, is approaching the end of his regulation "working life" just as I hope to one day with an inclination to study and pursue skills of his own and the time to do this I was moaning about missing last night. That Ani's a part of one is unlikely, but some Open University-style music courses on offer these days are the stuff of dream as well as hard work. The fences and more solid walls I rage at are coming down and that's excellent.
DiFranco provides me with no excuse for front-page scolarship, however, and this is better still. She's won huge admiration in little time among varied publics, if they have the necessary requisite: ears.
She's so enjoyable!
What she sings about are things I'll go into when we get to 'Knuckle Down' -- and 'Evolve'. She's politically minded sometimes with an angry sadness -- after all, blind greed and fundamentalist folly as a means of government affects us all. She doesn't like seeing "the music industry mafia pimping girl power" either in a song called 'Serpentine" that begins with a clarinet and other instruments up BJ's street, gently enough, but she is outraged.
Such fire-cracker lyrics, but one side of her, are the stuff of our times and will date her work one day, no bad thing since other fanatics in positions of power will probably be subjecting the rest of us to similarly dangerous ego-trips, but as for style: only connect.
BJ modestly says his wealth of musical knowledge "ends in 1950", when jazz was freeing up further. Think back to "scat-singing", old friend, listen to Ani and you've got the way it's often done now. That's all.
The blues are in your bag already, Woody Guthrie's a name that will last -- and if DiFranco didn't have her tongue in her cheek and a hand in an anonymous entertaining Ani bio, pull my other one.
Her music, full of echoes you'll recognise, will without a doubt make "converts": that bio speaks of "shattering stereotypes and winning over unsuspecting fans everywhere."
When she does, many sounds will surprise you.
If, say, you stick to "trad jazz", you're vulnerable to Ani's subversion. Familiar with many an African sound, got a useful reminder from some of hers of a promise made: to introduce other friends to a couple of summit meetings among men with guitars.
They are 'Talking Timbuktu' by Ry Cooder and Ali Farka Touré and the less well known but staggeringly good Mosala Makasi,' a live album with minimal studio magic where Papa Noel of what's now the Democratic Republic of Congo swaps notes with Cuba's Adan Pedroso. The outcome is unforgettable.
Everybody will find their own tastes reflected in women like Ani DiFranco and some others on my shortlist of established musicians who've released albums in 2005 that are remarkable for being quite different from what they've led fans to expect.
They happen to be people who this year have reached the stage in their lives and careers where the confidence to do that, stepping out on to very new ground, has grown to match the accomplishment.
Ani, on the site quoted above, sums this up (and gives me grounds for meditation while she's at it):
"i speak without reservation from what i know and who i am. i do so with the understanding that all people should have the right to offer their voice to the chorus whether the result is harmony or dissonance, the worldsong is a colorless dirge without the differences that distinguish us, and it is that difference which should be celebrated not condemned. should any part of my music offend you, please do not close your ears to it. just take what you can use and go on."
She pulls me up short with that assertion of people's right to dissonance.
Not for long!
A meditation on dissonance would be for 'The Orchard' but an instant gut acknowledgement she's absolutely right arises from knowing how sounds I've found dissonant cease to be so when my prejudices disappear and they become music instead.
Then you'll reading about more ex-dissonance, since I love what seemed hard. There's been much talk of Madonna's 'Confessions on a Dance Floor'. The limited edition isn't out yet while this week's release has put a court case in today's news. Now you can't get 'Frozen' in Belgium, that's global warming of musical tempers.
Plagiarism claims usually leave me cold in music; I don't know the facts, haven't heard what I understand to concern four bars and wonder why they're on to Madonna at No Rock& Roll Fun with no mention of this business yet.
Business it is. Money, that's all. I admire Madonna's career, respect the woman and enjoy her early albums. She's helped turned me on to the dance floor. This entry is one to stress the log's grown to be what it is because of the time I've spent catching up by doing the very kind of listening back I commend to BJ and others.
When people say their musical tastes stop anywhere, Ani DiFranco, a Righteous Babe with that independent label she's founded for herself and others, gives a sound message. If you don't like it, skip it, there's nothing more personal than what suits individuals in music.
When I was younger, I was a pain who would tell music-loving friends "You're wrong" on hearing such remarks. Even more foolishly, I thought explanations could prove them wrong. Obviously, putting a record on and saying they ought to like it if they understood ... blah! It was always blah, doubly irritating if I waxed technical.
Ani's wiser than I was. I can tell you and BJ a bit about her and everybody else, but the most I'll say to anyone with an "I don't like" kind of music is "Are you sure?
"Here's a musician people label that way. Give her a spin if you like her story. She might open a door."
12:37:32 AM link 
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