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Leyla McCalla sings her “Capitalist Blues” and all the injustices of the world
Leyla McCalla, who both parents are Haitians, was born in the state of New York in 1985. Her mother Regine Dupuy is the daughter of Ben Dupuy, who ran the Haitian’s famous newspaper Haiti Progres.
She lived in for a few years Africa. She later studied cello performance and chamber music in New York University. It was after her study that she moved to Louisiana.
Vari-Colored
Her widely praised album Vari-Colored Songs was a dedication to Langston Hughes. Some of the songs were inspired by Langston’s poems and famous Haitian folk songs in Haitian Creole.
McCalla states that the main tune she composed for the collection was Heart of Gold since it gave “a window into Hughes’ thinking”. Leyla devoted this work to Hughes since she says “reading his work made me want to be an artist”. McCalla has begun to contribute to her first album 5 years before it was released.
The Haitian American artist recently released her latest album not too long ago and it has found success. “Capital blues” and all the injustices of the world she titles it.
The title of the album sets the tone of the collection (Jazz Village/PIAS):
The artist censures the social shameful acts and the cutting edge focused world in which we live.
The melody sends a political message, and the pride of Haitian Creole sung legacy: Leyla McCalla stays like never before devoting to herself! I have capitalist blues / I swim in an ocean populated by sharks / They tell me what I have to do / To leave my little mark in this cold, so cold world “: from the first title,” Capitalist Blues “(sung in English, which gives its title to the album).
Leyla’s message
Leyla McCalla conveys her message. What’s more, this message, she, the craftsman loaded up with destiny. A fresh mother living in New Orleans is at least equivalent to that of the customary melody of Haiti, in Creole, that she delivered us in her previous recording, ” A day for the hunter, a day for the prey”. This world is remorseless and uncalled for, and the least fortunate still pay the cost.
“Mizè pas dous”: no hopelessness isn’t sweet, she lets us know in this other title of the record, in Creole, much the same as in “Lavi Vye Neg”, another Creole melody where she inspires “The Blessed Earth” – a name that Haitians provide for their country in their tunes…
For this third collection, Leyla McCalla has surrendered the cello with which she was previously accompanied by, and she picked a famous band to accompany her in New Orleans, “Lord James and The Special Men”, who offered her this one of a kind unique sound, which is absolutely “New Orleans jazz”.
Be that as it may, with this jazz ensemble, Leyla McCalla additionally investigates other melodic universes: “Cash is top dog” is created on a Caribbean calypso cadence; “Lavi Vye Neg” inspires the rhythms of Cape Verde; Heavy as lead, a tune about the contamination of the earth by lead, brings out the universe of Gospel with its backup to the organ; and so on.
Leyla McCalla has moved toward becoming in a couple of years a crucial craftsman on the world music scene. Fundamental since she reestablishes their pride to these a huge number of people of Haiti, today as in past hundreds of years, who are or were casualties of neediness, foul play, and the law, recorded and still current that the most grounded are in every case right, and that cash is the best – “Cash is the best”.
Be that as it may, this message for an existence where cash does not govern all, is conveyed today, everywhere throughout the world, by people, who, without being relatives of slaves like most of the occupants of Haiti yesterday and today, guarantee a world not so much materialistic, but rather more human. They are classified “alterglobalists” since they dream, as Leyla McCalla, of “a different universe”, of a superior world…
