Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Feminist Folk

Alynda Lee Segarra’s life is straight out of a strange folk song. A Puerto Rican girl who grew up in the Bronx, she immersed herself in the downtown punk scene and started a band. At 17, she ran away from home, rode freight trains across the country, and wound up in New Orleans. There, Segarra fell in with street musicians and took to playing rhythm on a washboard. She soon graduated to a banjo and formed Hurray for the Riff Raff.

The band’s latest album, Small Town Heroes, features songs drenched in the sounds of American folk and country but with lyrics that speak to thoroughly modern concerns. “Folk music is so great because it’s a conversation throughout the generations,” Segarra says.

Her song “The Body Electric” responds to Johnny Cash’s classic murder ballad, “Delia’s Gone.” Segarra calls out to the murderous narrator of Cash’s tune, reminding him of the futility of violence:

Oh, and tell me what’s a man with a rifle in his hand
Gonna do for a world that’s just dying slow?    
Tell me what’s a man with a rifle in his hand
Gonna do for his daughter when it’s her turn to go?

The singer’s stylistic switch from punk to Americana came in what she calls a corny moment. Listening to an old-timey song off the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, she was struck by how punk the lyrics felt — decrying capitalism and the cops. “All of the sudden I was like, ‘This is a really old idea,’” she says.

Hurray for the Riff Raff performs live in Studio 360 with Alynda Lee Segarra (vocals and guitar), Yosi Perlstein (violin), Casy McAllister (keyboards), Callie Millington (bass), and David Jamsion (drums).