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It was just me and him, they said.
The nurses were telling me he could hear me even if he couldnt respond.
It felt like he was blessing the album.
To live within the idioms of theold, weird American musicis to know that death is not the end.
Their literary folk-rock has always conversed with the past while attuned to the present.
They sing about dumpster diving and hiding from the cops in Ogallala, Nebraska.
They turn misfit heroes and lost friends into self-described monuments, like Lucinda WilliamsDrunken Angelbefore them.
Hurray for the Riff Raff stakes claims to American myths while inherently critiquing them.
When you think of the Band or Dylan, its so straight and so male, Segarra said.
What I love about playing folk music is fucking it up.
I can be your posterboy for the great American fall.
He would play piano and I would sing show tunes, Segarra happily recalls.
It was the cutest shit ever.
We brought the house down.
There was a standing ovation.
We got on the local Bronx news.
I remember being like,This is it, show business baby!I was 6.
By high school Segarra had turned goth and brooding.
After tenth grade, they were failing out of school, and eventually opted out.
I felt like I was just a really big problem, they said.
Come live with us!, the squatters said.
I know that you were living in hell.
I was very protective of train riding and the punk scene and the squatter scene, they say.
I would talk about it, but its also so sacred to me.
I didnt want to allow people to turn it into a product.
But in the pandemic it really hit, like,This is my life.
Its gonna end at some point.
And I want to remember.
There were the unruly old-time jazz ensemblesLoose MarblesandTuba Skinnyand their country band Sundown Songs.
All ofThe Navigatorwas me trying to get him to think I was cool, they joked of their dad.
He was always super supportive, but a little like,What the fuck is this country shit?
My dad had already done everything cool.
My life used to be so outside, they said.
I have a very vivid memory of sleeping under a bench here.
They laughed and recoiled.
Oh my God, there were so many rats.
It was on those long rides with their Discman that they began writing poems.
I felt that urgency my whole life.
The latter was stoked by Quico.
They always treat them like theyre disposable, they recalled.
It felt so clear to me because of him.
We were always going to big demos that was one of our big purposes in life, Jackie said.
Music felt very much like protection then, Segarra said.
They have carried that through their whole career.
Segarra seems to write with their eyes wide open.
/ From Marble Hill to the ghost of Emmett Till / Palante!
There was an elegance, there was something raw, it was their own language.
It had a politic, Myles said.
It was just all these elements where Im like,youre my people.
they belted, with gritted-teeth resolve that punched out in every syllable.
To Refaat Alareer / Palante!
/ To the poets of Palestine / Palante!
/ To all who came before, we say / Palante!
The day Segarra recorded Palante, in 2016, emotions were high.
I felt like I was biting off more than I could chew with the whole record.
I had been told by some friends about honoring the ocean by offering it a watermelon, Segarra said.
So I went and I brought a watermelon to the ocean.
And its not about me.
Its for a lot of people, and its for people that are not here anymore.
And I just really need help.
Then they went back and recorded a song in which the past would be reborn eternally.
The miracle is that Segarra doesnt look away.
