Leyla McCalla

Multi-instrumentalist Leyla McCalla finds inspiration from her past and present, whether it is her Haitian heritage or her adopted home of New Orleans. The alumna of Grammy award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops has risen to produce a distinctive sound that reflects the union of her roots and experience.

McCalla’s music is at once earthy, elegant, soulful and witty — it vibrates with three centuries of history, yet also feels strikingly fresh, distinctive, and contemporary, sonically blending New Orleans influences and Haitian rhythms, with lyrics sung in English, French, and Haitian Creole.

No Depression hails her latest album, Breaking the Thermometer, as providing “a tantalizing glimpse into her Haitian roots through her infectious rhythms and velvety crooning…The lilting melodies support a lyrical structure full of pain and corruption, but imbued with a fiery spirit of revolution against colonial rule.”