Leyla McCalla (from the album Sun Without the Heat

Leyla McCalla (from the album Sun Without the Heat

Leyla McCalla (from the album Sun Without the Heat available on Anti-Records) (by Lee Zimmerman)
 
Leyla McCalla’s new album offers an insightful view of race, cultural disparity, and the backstory of the Afro-American heritage. She allows for authenticity, often in the form of the Brazilian polyrhythms and the African beats that propel these songs along. Ultimately though, the music is fueled by her commitment to sharing the sanctity of a unique human experience, one that’s rich with resolve. In short, Sun Without the Heat serves to affirm McCalla’s cultural insights and observations, even when that reality becomes difficult to confront, despite the primary perceptions. 
 
The premise is further affirmed by the album title itself, a literary reference drawn from Frederick Douglass’s 1857 speech to a largely white crowd of abolitionists six years before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

‘You want the crops without the plow
You want the rain without the thunder
You want the ocean without the roar of its waters’
 
Leyla McCalla brings that message to bear in the pointedly stated title track’s core message — that is, that liberation and equality can’t be fulfilled without decided commitment to the cause. She puts it more explicitly in the song’s riveting refrain: 'we all want the warmth of the sun but not everybody wants to feel the heat. You have to have both’.
 
Happily, then, the messaging and the music are shared in sync. The tone varies from the sweetly serendipitous “So, I‘ll Go” and the stately closing track “I Want To Believe” to the Bossa Nova-like shuffle that underscores “Tower”, the jazzy, freewheeling “Tree”, and the emphatic and insistent “Love We Had”. Even so, the focus never strays from McCalla’s personal pronouncements. ‘Give yourself a break’ she insists on the song of the same name. ‘You’re gonna have to be wrong’.
 
All throughout, Leyla McCalla speaks with a knowing conviction, exuding wisdom and reflection in equal measure. Three albums on, she’s clearly made her mark in a most persistent and profound way. (by Lee Zimmerman)


Listen and buy the music of Leyla McCalla from AMAZON
 
For more information, please visit the Leyla McCalla website