Cellist

New Orleans-based singer and multi-instrumentalist Leyla McCalla mines her Haitian American heritage for a sound at once earthy, elegant, and soulful—vibrating with Creole, Cajun, and American jazz and folk influences. Formerly a cellist with the Grammy-winning string band Carolina Chocolate Drops and part of the ensemble Our Native Daughters with Festival-favorite Rhiannon Giddens, the “liquid-voiced” McCalla topped NPR’s “Best Roots Music of 2022” with her latest solo project, Breaking the Thermometer, which the outlet deemed one of the year’s “most compelling.”

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Leyla McCalla

College of Charleston

There are more questions than answers on Leyla McCalla’s remarkable new album, Breaking The Thermometer. What does democracy look like? Who does it work for? How long can it last? On its surface, the record explores the legacy of Radio Haiti—Haiti’s first radio station to report the news in Haitian Kreyòl, the voice of the people—as well as the journalists who risked and lost their lives to broadcast it for nearly 50 years. But on a more fundamental level, the collection is a deeply personal reckoning with memory and identity, with the roles of artists and activists and immigrants in modern society, with the very notion of storytelling itself. In delving into the project, McCalla found herself forced to grapple with her own experiences as a Haitian-American woman, unraveling layers of marginalization and generations of repression and resolve as she searched for a clearer vision of herself and her purpose. The result is at once a work of radical performance art, historical scholarship, and personal memoir, a wide-ranging and powerful meditation on family and democracy and free expression that couldn’t have arrived at a more timely moment.


Acadiana Center for the Arts

Haitian-American artist Leyla McCalla draws upon her experience as a bilingual multi-instrumentalist and New Orleans resident to create distinctive music that reflects both her past and present. An alumna of Grammy award-winning African-American string band the Carolina Chocolate Drops, McCalla has also received praise as a solo artist. McCalla sings in French, Haitian Creole and English, and plays cello, tenor banjo and guitar. Her music is influenced by traditional Creole, Cajun and Haitian music, as well as by American jazz and folk. Layla’s remarkable new album, Breaking The Thermometer, is captivating. Fueled by rich, sophisticated melodic work and intoxicating Afro-Caribbean rhythms. She writes with great insight and introspection, examining her own personal journey of growth and self-discovery.

Leyla McCalla

Cellist

Events

Past events

May 26, 2024

Leyla McCalla · Spoleto Festival USA

Dec 14, 2023

Leyla McCalla · Acadiana Center for the Arts

About

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