"The beauty of song is you can spread information, you can make people feel not alone. And you can also create a time capsule for people in the future to know what we’re dealing with now," Hurray for the Riff Raff (aka Alynda Segarra) tells Marisa Lagos on KCRW's Press Play. “The more we are faced with really big challenges as a country and big challenges as a planet, the more I feel really grounded … I want to use this time intentionally." You can hear what else they had to say in the episode below.
"The Troubadour: How Alynda Segarra, a former train-hopping punk from the Bronx, became one of America’s best songwriters," titles an extensive profile in New York magazine's Vulture on Segarra and their new album, The Past Is Still Alive, written by Jenn Pelly. You can read the article here.
Segarra created The Past Is Still Alive during a period of personal grief, when they found inspiration in radical poetry, railroad culture, outsider art, the work of writer Eileen Myles, and activist groups like ACT UP and Gran Fury. Segarra uses their lyrics as a way to immortalize and say goodbye to those they have loved and lost, and to honor both the heartbroken and the hopeful parts of themselves. "Segarra has created an epic tale of life on the road, a nearly mythic version of their own life story that stands alongside other great American musical travelogues," exclaims NPR Music. "Career-defining." Rolling Stone says: "Segarra has honed their craft into a cohesive, astonishingly realized singer-songwriter record ... the best batch of songs Segarra's ever written." Paste calls it "a celebratory measure of love, sanctuary, and defiance ... In their hands, the trauma of the present day is a prelude to the possibilities of a better tomorrow." You can get the album and hear it here.
Hurray for the Riff Raff is currently touring with music from The Past Is Still Alive . In partnership with PLUS1, $1 per ticket will support This Must Be The Place and their work to distribute Naloxone—the lifesaving medicine that reverses an overdose, and will be available for free at every Hurray for the Riff Raff tour stop. After returning from Europe this spring, Hurray for the Riff Raff joins Norah Jones on her West Coast summer tour. Details and tickets below at at nonesuch.com/on-tour.
HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF ON TOUR
HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF ON TOUR WITH NORAH JONES
