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Former Carolina Chocolate Drop Leyla McCalla is uncomfortable with the current political environment as exemplified by the album title, Capitalist Blues and several of its songs. Yet, she is growing increasingly fond of the musical culture of New Orleans, where she’s resided since 2010. Although she added several instruments and voices to her 2016 A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey, here she’s backed by a full band, assembled by producer Jimmy Horn of King James and the Special Men. On this, her third album, McCalla eschews solo performance, even leaving behind her signature calling card, the cello. “I’ve come to a place where I feel like making art is not tied to being a cellist,” she says.
This collaboration was rather serendipitous. Horn had asked her to sing in a session with his band at a time when she had some new songs but was unsure what to do with them. While working with Horn’s R&B band, she realized that kind of accompaniment would be best to breathe life into these songs. Yet, viewing the 11 tracks, the musical configuration is varied, never the same for any two tracks. It’s much more electric than her prior work, but fiddles, banjos, accordions, and twelve string acoustic guitar find their way into some selections. McCalla splits her duties between just lead vocals; or accompanying herself on electric guitar or tenor banjo.
The title track has that classic swinging traditional New Orleans sound, only fitting that it was recorded in Preservation Hall with piano, trumpet, clarinet, trombone, and tuba. The classic sound, of course, belies her message for frustration – “It’s not fair, it’s not right/I don’t’ know what I’m gonna do with my life/It’s not fair, it’s not right/I wasn’t born to just endure all this strife.” She turns to calypso in the similarly themed “Money Is King.” The stripped down “Lavi Vye Neg” is sung in Haitian Creole, which she thinks of as a ‘language of resistance.” “Penha” features just McCalla with her electric guitar and pandeiro, a type of hand frame drum popular in Brazil, singing again in Haitian Creole, translated from Portuguese.
The slow blues “Heavy As Lead” is one of her most personal songs, addressing the threat caused by lead in the soil, a problem that struck a nerve when learning that her daughter tested positive for elevated lead levels. She is the lead vocalist among a group of three backing vocalists and spare musical support for this one that inevitably leads to the more raucous “Me and My Baby.” She mourns the awful Syrian bombing in “Aleppo,” displaying a remarkable vocal range while Jimmy Horn churns the chaotic, dissonant sounds on his electric guitar and bass. Again it’s the meeting of opposites – her pretty voice versus sonic distortion.
The capitalist theme returns in the Creole “Mize Pa Dous.” Here is an excerpt of one stanza if it were sung in English –“Poverty isn’t sweet/Poverty isn’t sacred/Money doesn’t pile up/And my debt won’t change.” Again, she then moves to a happier place with the Zydeco flavored “Oh My Love.” The acoustic “Ain’t No Use” is a lament, another expression of her frustration, sung beautifully against a backdrop of her tenor banjo, and 12 string guitar, viola and upright bass.
Given McCalla’s stance, her take on the closer, “Settle Down” is stated in these words – “We stand up/To say NO/We rise up /To say NO.” Again, she sings in Haitian Creole, backed by members of Lakou Mizik, a multigenerational collective of Haitian musicians formed in the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake. The group includes elder legends and rising young talents. Like McCalla, they are focused on the connections between Haitian culture and New Orleans Creole connections.
While McCalla has broadened her musical palette, her interest in social issues and justice are still very much in place. Look for her again in next month’s socially conscious forthcoming project with Rhiannon Giddens, Allison Russell and Amythyst Kiah on Songs of Our Native Daughters, a major musical statement in Black History Month.
