Songs of artist: Hurray for the Riff Raff

Hurray for the Riff Raff is an Indie rock band from New Orleans, Louisiana formed by Alynda Segarra. Segarra draws inspiration from cult favorite Rodriguez, a Mexican-American who translated working-class stories from Detroit into powerful rock ballads, and the Ghetto Brothers, an underground band from the 1970s South Bronx who stitched Puerto Rican nationalist messages into a rough-hewn fabric of Santana and Sly and the Family Stone Afro-Caribbean funk. She reached back to her cultural ancestors in the form of the radical political group the Young Lords and the salsa singer Héctor Lavoe. The latest album, The Navigator, was released on March 10th, 2017. The Navigator, has received much critical acclaim, including: #8 Mojo’s 50 Best Albums of 2017, #9 NPR’S 50 Best Albums of 2017, #10 UNCUT’S 75 Best Albums of 2017, Vice/Noisey’s 100 Best Albums of 2017, and NPR World Cafe’s 10 Albums That Made 2017 Brighter. To find her way back home, Segarra became the willing vessel for a character she calls “The Navigator,” from which her new album takes its name. She describes The Navigator, a/k/a Navita Milagros Negrón, as “this girl who grows up in a city that’s like New York, who’s a street kid, like me when I was little, that has a special place in the history of her people.” Through The Navigator, the listener hears an ambitiously interwoven, cinematic story of a wandering soul that finally realized she needed to connect with and honor her ancestors.