"The GRAMMY Museum welcomed Hurray for the Riff Raff at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, NY for an intimate conversation moderated by Hanif Abdurraqib, writer from the east side of Columbus, Ohio, about the creative process of their album, The Past Is Still Alive, their career, and more, with a performance to follow.

Hurray for the Riff Raff is part of the many artists to be featured in the GRAMMY Museum’s New York City program series, which includes bringing a slate of the GRAMMY Museum’s renowned GRAMMY In The Schools Education Programs and Public Programs to the East Coast. “A New York Evening With…” is generously supported by the Dawn and Brian Hoesterey Family Foundation.

ABOUT HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF

Following the release of The Past Is Still Alive, Hurray for the Riff Raff is being called ""one of America's best songwriters"" (Vulture). Earning a nomination for Album of The Year at the 2024 Americana Honors & Awards, and finding fans in everyone from Elton John to poet Eileen Myles, it has been hailed as ""the next great American road album"" (The Atlantic), through which bandleader Alynda Segarra (they/them) is ""etching their own story into the American songbook, and asserting that they belong there"" (The New York Times). Pitchfork named it Best New Music, NPR Music's Ann Powers drew comparisons to Joni Mitchell's Hejira and Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels On a Gravel Road, and in a sweeping cover story, Paste declared it ""the most important album of the 2020s so far.""

Produced by Brad Cook, The Past Is Still Alive is both a memoir and a roadmap to America's fringes, as Alynda Segarra uses portraits of their itinerant experiences to deliver profound reflections on time, memory and loss. Born in the Bronx and of Puerto Rican heritage, Segarra was radicalized before they were a teenager, baptized in the anti-war movement and galvanized in New York's punk haunts and queer spaces. At 17, Segarra split, becoming the kid in a communal squat before shuttling to California, where they began crisscrossing the country by hopping trains. They eventually found home—spiritual, emotional, physical—in New Orleans, forming a hobo band and realizing that music was not only a way to share what they had learned and seen but to learn and see more. Hurray for the Riff Raff steadily rose from house shows to major stages, and on The Past Is Still Alive, Segarra finally tells their story themselves. It is the record of Segarra's life so far, not only because it chronicles the past to understand the present, but also because it is the most magnetic thing Hurray for the Riff Raff have yet made."