Alynda Segarra was born and raised in the Bronx, which they left at the age of seventeen, running away from everything and everyone they knew, hopping freight trains or hitchhiking across the country in the company of a band of street urchins. Segarra moved to New Orleans in 2007, and formed two bands: Dead Man’s Street Orchestra and Hurray for the Riff Raff. In 2015, Segarra decamped to Nashville, then to New York, to make their last. album, 2016’s critically praised The Navigator, an ambitious and fully realized concept album that was their quest to reclaim their Puerto Rican identity. Segarra’s previous records as Hurray for the Riff Raff are Crossing the Rubicon (EP, 2007), It Don’t Mean I Don’t Love You (2008), Young Blood Blues (2010), Hurray for the Riff Raff (2011), Look Out Mama (2012), My Dearest Darkest Neighbor (2013), and Small Town Heroes (2014). The Nonesuch debut of Hurray for the Riff Raff (aka Alynda Segarra), LIFE ON EARTH (coming in 2022), is a departure for the Bronx-born, New Orleans-based singer/songwriter. Its eleven new “nature punk” tracks on the theme of survival are music for a world in flux—songs about thriving, not just surviving, while disaster is happening.
