The Capitalist Blues – Leyla McCalla, 2019

🎤🎵🎻🎹🎶 Based in New Orleans for several years now, singer and cellist Leyla McCalla subtly blends her Haitian roots with the musical tradition of Louisiana. Classically trained, she offers a rich mix of jazz, blues, Cajun music, Creole folk and more, as on this militant Capitalist Blues, her third album, out in 2019 on Jazz Village. The bars are often odd, and the blues sounds like a slow waltz. Accordion and violin dress up the mazurka, which is as Caribbean as it is Louisiana. And the Capitalist Blues closes with the almost carnivalesque trance of Settle Down, a message of resistance driven by conch shells. A daring, luminous album, in the image of a singular and necessary artist.