{"title":"Leyla McCalla","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"leyla-mccalla-folkways-records-vari-colored-songs-vinyl-lp","title":"Leyla McCalla (Folkways Records) - Vari-Colored Songs -  Vinyl LP","description":"Leyla McCalla's Vari-Colored Songs is a celebration of the complexity of Black culture and identity, and a tribute to the legacy of poet and thinker Langston Hughes. A songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, McCalla sets Hughes' poems to her own spare yet profound compositions. She juxtaposes these with arrangements of folk songs from Haiti, the first independent Black nation and the homeland of her parents, tapping into the nuances of Black experience. McCalla's music elegantly weaves Haitian influences together with American folk music, just as Hughes incorporated Black vernacular into his remarkable poetry, and the way the Haitian Kreyòl is a beacon for the survival of African identity through the brutal legacy of colonialism. This is music of reclamation, imbued with a quiet power that grapples with the immense weight of history.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTracksCredits\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e1 Heart of Gold\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e2 When I Can See the Valley\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e3 Mesi Bondye\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e4 Girl\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e5 Kamèn Sa w FÈ?\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e6 Too Blue\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e7 Manman Mwen\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e8 Song for a Dark Girl\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e9 Love Again Blues\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e10 Rose Marie\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e11 Latibonit\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e12 Search\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e13 Lonely House\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e14 Changing Tide","brand":"AENT","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40665893896367,"sku":"","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0550\/2631\/9535\/products\/3847905-2597424.jpg?v=1631902343"},{"product_id":"leyla-mccalla-breaking-the-thermometer-vinyl-lp","title":"Leyla McCalla - Breaking the Thermometer - Vinyl LP","description":"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. McCalla's beautiful vocals are described by The New York Times as, \"Her voice is disarmingly natural... her magnificently transparent music holds tidings of family, memory, solitude and the inexorability of time: weighty thoughts handled with the lightest touch imaginable. \"\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTracks\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e1 Nan Fon Bwa\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e2 Fort Dimanche\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e3 Bon Appetit Messieurs\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e4 Le Bal Est Fini\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e5 Dan Reken\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e6 Dodinin\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e7 Ekzile\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e8 Pouki\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e9 You Don't Know Me\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e10 Jean and Michele\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e11 Vini We\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e12 Artibonite\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e13 Still Looking\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e14 Memory Song\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e15 Boukman's Prayer","brand":"AENT","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44521503883493,"sku":"","price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0550\/2631\/9535\/files\/4063795-2793640.jpg?v=1704406940"}],"url":"https:\/\/freshproducerecords.com\/collections\/leyla-mccalla-1.oembed","provider":"Fresh Produce Records Macon","version":"1.0","type":"link"}