The Capitalist Blues – Leyla McCalla, 2019

🎤🎵🎻🎹🎶 Singer Leyla McCalla, based in New Orleans for several years, blends her Haitian origins with the music of Louisiana. Classically trained – she took cello lessons – she offers a multicolored cocktail 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 has the feel of 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. Definitely a singer to watch!