haunting new video for Hurray for the Riff Raff’s “The Body Electric”

From NPR’s blog The Record, The Political Folk Song Of The Year:

When Alynda Lee Segarra of Hurray for the Riff Raff wrote the song “The Body Electric,” she knew it would make its way into the world, and hoped its effects would be palpable. Horrified by the rapes that have made tragic news from India to America’s college campuses, the singer-songwriter noticed that her own people — music makers and music lovers — would regularly sing along with choruses about killing women, comfortably accepting gender-based violence as part of the ballad tradition. No more, she said. “The Body Electric” was her intervention.

And here’s the haunting new video (definitely worth taking this full-screen):

I’ve been lucky to see Hurray for the Riff Raff three times in 2014, and there’s no doubt that Segarra and her band are forces to be reckoned with — I suspect we’ll be seeing beautifully and challenging songs from Segarra for a long time to come.

No surprise here that American Songwriter chose “The Body Electric” as the top song of 2014.

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