Meet Ali Dineen

Ali Dineen serves up some downright triumphant neo folk jams. Fans of all things granola and peanut butter should put this wonderful person on their radar. Their latest album Hold On had me walking around with a dog by the water. I don’t even have a dog. I had to borrow the thing. Completely worth it though.

AN ART NAMED MARTIAL a Mad-lib by, Ali Dineen

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Would You Rather

every dog in the world is replaced by giant crabs or giant bats. Please explain your answer.

Crabs, on the condition that people help them reach an appropriate ecosystem for survival and don't just eat them or let them dry out on land/indoors. Bats are great too but giant bats are a little terrifying.

Some questions with Ali Dineen

What is your favorite candy to eat?

 Sour Haribo Gummy Bears

What are your favorite subjects to write about in your music?

Grief & love, stories of resistance & healing

What is the state of Folk in NYC right now?

For me, it revolves around the Jalopy Theatre and School of Music, a non-profit dedicated to the preservation and cultivation of folk music, as a broad genre. In my view, Jalopy is the center of a new folk revival happening in NYC right now. This place is a remarkable venue that does everything it can to support the artists that perform and teach there. Classes include everything from fiddle to overtone singing based in Indian Classical techniques to vocal harmony of the Beach Boys (a class taught by yours truly!). They host the annual Brooklyn Folk Festival every April, as well as numerous other small festivals throughout the year, with performers from around the world and representing many cultures, from Mexican Jarocho music to Kora music to gospel to old time string bands. Jalopy is also just an incredible community; I know whenever I go there I'll run into anywhere from three to fifteen people I know, which is a rare and beautiful thing in New York City. So, in short, in this fairly small but vibrant community, folk music in NYC is strong!

What is your favorite board game? Do you cheat?

I don't play board games as much as I'd like, but I love Scrabble and I do not cheat. I recently did a 1,000 piece puzzle that got me pretty riled up too. Is it possible to cheat at puzzles?


Can you speak to the creative process behind your latest release “Hold On”?

I started writing songs for this album just before my last one came out, at the end of 2016. Since then, those couple songs have evolved a lot , switches instruments, gained string arrangements, and I wrote a couple other songs to fill it out into an EP. At some point I realized I wanted the album to feel like a whole piece, connected throughout, and decided to write an "Overture" and "Outro" that are the same musically, but the final song has lyrics, to make the whole thing feel like a cycle. I started actually recording in December 2018 after launching a crowdfunding campaign, continued in May and finished up in July, then went on to the mixing, mastering and physical production, which was more intensive because I was pressing vinyl.

In terms of the content of the songs, this album grew out of personal heartbreak, and the feeling of a collective heartbreak as we’ve watched the world descend farther into fascism and irreversible climate catastrophe. So, it contains a lot of grief. The title track, “Hold On” is about the US-Mexico border and borders everywhere, about all those people dying for no reason except for the greed and fear of others. But that song, and all of these songs, are also about love. They are about what we can create when we care for each other and for ourselves, when that is our orientation to the world instead of fear or competition. These songs are inspired by some of my work with No More Deaths, and New Sanctuary Coalition, both important migrant justice organizations that rely entirely on huge communities of dedicated volunteers. Sometimes it feels like there’s nothing to be done, like any work is just a drop in the ocean. But one jug of water in the desert might let someone live, and assisting someone with their asylum application might mean they can stay here. Writing the album took three years — since I released the last one. It took moving through heartbreak and disillusionment and grief, to arrive not at ecstasy or a belief that everything will be okay, but at the realization that no matter what, life continues somehow and is resilient. No matter what, there is always light, always love. No matter how long we’ve got, and especially if we don’t have long, we can and need to love and fight relentlessly for one another.

What has been your best interaction with a fan to date?

There are so many that have been so important to me. But one that comes to mind is receiving a message from someone who told me that she'd discovered my music in the same week that her brother was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. She wrote to me months later, just after her brother was put into hospice, and said one of my songs had been a real balm to her throughout that time. Oddly enough, the specific verse she references, I had written about my friend's father who passed on due to brain cancer a few years ago. That was pretty profound.


Are you a self-taught singer or did you have formal lessons?

I grew up singing a little with my folks on long car rides, and then in high school joined the choir, where I learned a lot about singing and gained confidence, so I need to thank Mr. Crouch from Hunter College High School for his great direction! I've taken a few voice lessons over the years, and besides that am self-taught.

Any final comments? (This is your electronic soapbox for one last answer.)

I've been reading a lot about the medieval witch hunts as linked to the rise of capitalism, the history of indigenous peoples in the so-called USA, and the history of transgender throughout millennia. I guess I just want to share how astounded I've been by all of this history; sometimes horrified and saddened, but sometimes deeply inspired to see that throughout history, humans are not inherently violent, and women and non-binary folks haven't always been oppressed and considered inferior to men, but rather have been lifted up, honored, sometimes worshipped and at the very least on much more equal footing. So, everything we're fighting for today, on behalf of women, transgender people, people of color, indigenous peoples, immigrants, is all a really long time coming and has long historical precedent, that goes back way farther than these few hundred years of capitalism. So let's keep at it.

AND thank you for inviting me to be interviewed!