Ani DiFranco shows she can turn any setting into an activist platform at her NPR Music Tiny Desk performance

Ani DiFranco at NPR’ Music’s Tiny Desk | still from video via NPR Music

Ani DiFranco can now add ‘performing in front of the famed knick-knack-covered shelves at NPR offices’ to her thirty-years-long list of musical accomplishments, as the similarly famed singer-songwriter recently made her Tiny Desk concert debut.

It’s no secret that DiFranco values and utilizes the political platform that being an artist has offered her, as she is known for being a strong voice in progressive human rights activism. And being how times are right now, she’s got a lot of things to say — which is exactly what she does on her latest album, Binary. 

Performing one of the album’s tracks, “Play God,” DiFranco opened the performance with a brief monologue on the meaning behind the song by highlighting the track’s focus on reproductive freedom. Trailing off for a bit on a political philosophy soft-tangent — I feel you, Ani — DiFranco offers that implementing the right of reproductive freedom is the “first step to world peace.”

Watch the set below, where DiFranco and her funky band also perform “Dithering,” and “Swan Dive.”