Leyla McCalla

Leyla McCalla – Sun Without the Heat (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 39:29 minutes | 780 MB | Genre: Acoustic, Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Anti – Epitaph

Gatefold. On her new album Sun Without the Heat, McCalla brings more playfulness and joy than she has on previous records when she speaks to the concerns that have shaped her career, mainly including an ethos in which you must look back at lost and erased histories before you can embrace a forward vision of Afrofuturism and the importance of music making to heal and forge relationships across differences. Across Sun Without the Heat’s ten tracks, she achieves this with music that combines jazz, Haitian Twoubadou, American blues, folk and Brazilian Tropicalismo.Born in New York City to Haitian emigrants and activists, McCalla possesses a stunning mastery of the cello, tenor banjo and guitar.

(more…)

Leyla McCalla – Sun Without the Heat (2024) [24Bit-96kHz] FLAC [PMEDIA] ⭐️
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 00:39:29 minutes | 755 MB | Genre: Pop, Rock, Alternatif et Indé
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover

(more…)

Leyla McCalla – Breaking The Thermometer (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 46:25 minutes | 931 MB | Genre: Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Anti – Epitaph

Leyla McCalla finds inspiration from her past and present, whether it is her Haitian heritage or her adopted home of New Orleans, she a bilingual multi-instrumentalist and alumna of Grammy award-winning African-American string band, the Carolina Chocolate Drops has risen to produce a distinctive sound that reflects the union of her roots and experience. McCalla has produced a multi-disciplinary music, dance and theatre work, Breaking the Thermometer to Hide the Fever, which follows her personal journey as she uncovers the history of Radio Haiti, the first radio station in Haiti to report news in Haitian Kreyol – the voice of the people. Through this juxtaposition of voices – the personal and political, the anecdotal and the journalistic – McCalla gives expression to the enduring spirit of Haiti’s marginalized poor in the face of several centuries of political oppression. Performances of the theatre work are currently scheduled in New Orleans and Philadelphia with more to be announced in soon. The process of creating Breaking the Thermometer to Hide the Fever included listening to countless archival recordings of interviews by Radio Haiti’s journalists, and McCalla specifically wrote “Fort Dimanche” after listening to a testimonial interview that Michele Montas – the prominent former journalist and station director at Radio Haiti – had conducted with a survivor of Duvalier’s political prison. In the interview, the man outlined his living conditions, the daily terror and torture that these political prisoners were subjected to and the events that led to his arrest. This album is a soundtrack of sorts to the theatre piece, featuring the songs that Leyla McCalla wrote and performs in this work.
(more…)

Leyla McCalla – Vari-colored Songs: A Tribute to Langston Hughes (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 40:29 minutes | 700 MB | Genre: Acoustic, Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Dixiefrog

The daughter of Haitian immigrant parents, Leyla McCalla, whether by design or synchronicity, moved to New Orleans in 2010 after studying cello performance and chamber music at New York University, and once there, while busking and playing on the street corners and in the bars and clubs, she fell in love with Louisiana Creole culture, and coupled with her further explorations of Haiti’s traditional Creole folk music, she developed a strong and grounded musical vision, part old and traditional and part bohemian intellectual. As this debut solo album (she was featured on the Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Leaving Eden album and has toured extensively with them) shows, it’s a mix that McCalla balances well, with most of the tracks featuring her musical arrangements of various Langston Hughes poems, along with striking personal versions of a couple of traditional Haitian folk songs. If this sounds like things here will be a little stiff and academic, well, they’re not, as McCalla makes the Hughes lyrics her own, and the sparse, haunting feel of these tracks is timeless, belonging to this century but feeling like they could have come from early in the century before, too, or even the one before that, a kind of musical hat trick that is pretty impressive, to say the least. McCalla’s voice is warm and just slightly jazz-tinged, and she plays sparse tenor banjo and acoustic guitar on some of the cuts here, but it is her cello playing that gives the album its unique sound, all warm and round and ominous somehow, taking the stark arrangements to deep emotional places. The opener, “Heart of Gold,” sets the tone, spare and yet expansive, and tracks like the tenor banjo-led “Mesi Bondye” and the swinging acoustic guitar blues “Too Blue” give the set list some variety. McCalla’s debut solo album is a fully realized and nuanced gem, and one can’t help but be interested and curious about her next musical project.

(more…)

Leyla McCalla – The Capitalist Blues (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 42:30 minutes | 483 MB | Genre: Blues, Folk, Jazz, World
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Jazz Village

In this third album, the enchanting and beautiful Leyla manages to capture moments of pure joy. She is the kind of musician that tells a story. A New-Yorker with Haitian roots, Leyla settled in the bayou of Louisiana to explore her Creole roots and to dig out and spread the message of social and environmental injustice. She really came into her own during those eight years spent in the New Orleans sunshine and has even abandoned her cello to embrace the clarinet, violin, piano and electric guitar. Now, the multi-instrumentalist is mixing it up more than ever, supported by a group for the very first time, King James & The Special Men. The retro folk of The Capitalist Bluesdabbles in calypso (Mize Pa Dous), R&B (Me and My Baby) and Creole blues (Lavi Vye Neg) and Leyla’s vocals alternate seamlessly between Creole and English. A very well-arranged album that captures the leisurely lifestyle of the tropics.  – Charlotte Saintoin

(more…)

Leyla McCalla – A Day For The Hunter, A Day For The Prey (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 39:08 minutes | 771 MB | Genre: Folk, Blues, Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Jazz Village

As with her excellent debut album, Leyla McCalla brings all of her diverse cultural influences to her music. A Day For The Hunter, A Day For The Prey manages to show both the singer’s Haitian roots, but also that Louisiana folk that has seeped into her music since her move to New Orleans. English, French or Creole are all languages in which she performs, and the New York-born artist also juggles influences from Jazz and Blues.

(more…)