LEYLA Mccalla TRIO “An Exhilarating Thing, Hearing A

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LEYLA McCALLA TRIO “An exhilarating thing, hearing a musical virtuoso explore her voice’s unanticipated potential in all of the ways that Leyla McCalla does” – NPR Music “Rich with big thoughts” – USA Today “An invigorating blend of Haitian folk songs and American old-time music” – Downbeat Leyla McCalla is a New York-born Haitian-American living in New Orleans, who sings in French, Haitian Creole and English, and plays cello, tenor banjo and guitar. Deeply influenced by traditional Creole, Cajun and Haitian music, as well as by American jazz and folk, her music is at once earthy, elegant, soulful and witty — it vibrates with three centuries of history, yet also feels strikingly fresh, distinctive and contemporary. Leyla’s debut album, Vari-Colored Songs: A Tribute to Langston Hughes, was named 2013’s Album of the Year by the London Sunday Times and Songlines magazine, and received additional raves from a number of other publications, including the New York Times, Boston Globe and Offbeat, for its haunting mixture of music and message. Now, having toured extensively in the U.S., Europe and Israel in support of Vari-Colored Songs, Leyla is focusing on her next album. Titled A Day For The Hunter, A Day For The Prey, the album will be released in the spring of 2016 by Jazz Village/Harmonia Mundi. A Day For The Hunter, A Day For The Prey will continue to explore the themes of social justice and pan-African consciousness that marked Vari-Colored Songs, and will once again feature songs sung in English, French and Haitian Creole. The album will also include guest appearances by legendary guitarist Marc Ribot, Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Louis Michot of the Lost Bayou Ramblers, and New Orleans singer-songwriter/guitarist Sarah Quintana. The Leyla McCalla Trio is: Leyla McCalla – vocals, cello, banjo Daniel Tremblay – banjo, guitar, vocals Free Feral – viola, vocals .

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70 71 OPEN UP MYAllison RussellVOICE finds a way to tell her painful story though song by Hilary Hughes n the summer of 2019, singer, themselves. Native Daughters had begun to work on songwriter, and multi-instru- Every night, Russell would sing the album. While getting acquainted mentalist Allison Russell hit the “Quasheba, Quasheba,” one of her with him and her newfound family, she road with Our Native Daughters — contributions to the group’s 2019 album, learned that a distant cousin had delved Iher supergroup of a roots quartet with Songs of Our Native Daughters. Over deep into their Grenadian lineage and Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, and mournful strings and a steady beat, traced its roots to its matriarch, Leyla McCalla — for a tour that was, quite Russell’s voice — luminous and Quasheba, who had survived the literally, a family affair. The moms in the empathetic, yet resonant with a vibrato unspeakable horrors of slavery. band brought their children along for steeped in sorrow — invoked the “She endured things that I can’t even the ride, which meant that Russell and strength of one of her relatives. Russell imagine — being ripped from home, her young daughter, Ida, shared a bunk grew up in Montreal, first in foster care culture, language, any kind of love from on the packed bus for the weeks-long and then with her mother and her her family,” she says of her muse. “She journey. During the day, the tour nannies adoptive father — a white supremacist survived the Middle Passage and took the kids on adventures in whichever who abused her, sexually and multiple sails.
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