“There’s powerful plant life in New Orleans.”
Alynda Segarra speaks to Victoria Segal.
Life On Earth is a vast title.
“I like to push myself!” You have different voices on the album – writer and poet Ocean Vuong on Nightqueen, an asylum seeker on Precious Cargo, even a New Orleans oak on Kin.
Why did you need them? “I actually wanted a lot more, but I needed to edit myself.
I have a collection of a lot of different speeches. Throughout the pandemic, I’ve gotten so into listening to podcasts while I walk because there’s just so much loneliness. It felt really important to listen to conversations and hear ideas. I wanted to add these little snippets of what helped me. I really like just having voices around. Sometimes I have just TV on but I feel podcasts are less brainkilling. I love this one called Death Sex & Money; there’s another one called Living Myth with a guy called Michael Meade. He’s an expert on mythology from all over the world and he just riffs on different mythological stories and connects them to current events, and I love all that.”
Who is the voice on Precious Cargo?
“That’s my friend who I visited when he was in detention. He’s now out and living his life. I thought it was important to see what he wanted to tell the world since I was telling so much of what I learned from him about his journey and his survival. The point of Precious Cargo was to tell a human story that everyone can relate to, not even make it a political issue: ‘this is someone’s life! This is their youth!’ This person was in their twenties and a year was stolen from him all because he was seeking asylum. And it’s a story of incredible survival. To cross this land in the name of surviving, I think is really admirable. Talk about mythology – it’s a hero’s journey. I’ve noticed in my life people think it’s really… cute, almost, that I ran away and hopped trains – but I was doing illegal things, trespassing on lines. But when I do it, it’s OK, it’s this romantic story – so why isn’t it OK for this person?”
Did you have musical touchstones during recording?
“I was thinking a lot about The Clash, I was thinking about MIA, I was thinking about Beverly Glenn-Copeland. I was putting all those worlds together – then, of course, I love Bad Bunny. I was learning from them: Bad Bunny seems like he’s having so much fun and he’s generating a lot of energy. With The Clash, I wanted that urgency. There’s like a punk spirit. You could be playing an acoustic guitar and that will come out, the punk inside.”
Why did you want a tree to have the last word?
“Because that’s who I went to for healing and for wisdom. People got very called to the natural world, got into gardening, saw the world in a new light, and that was certainly my experience. I looked around and thought, ‘Why do I feel so lonely and afraid when there’s all this powerful plant life around me in New Orleans?’ And it’s survived so much – it’s survived pummelling hurricanes, or it dies and it’s reborn. It just keeps going. And I think that’s another theme of the album – death. I think it’s a part of life and I don’t think it’s the end.”