“Music doesn’t really come without a story that I am trying to tell or a thought that I am trying to unravel. (…) Music is a language that doesn’t have any boundaries”. – Leyla McCalla
In September 2019, I started my column “Girls United!” with the aim of talking about female artists of impact. During these past five years since its launch, I have had the chance and the honor to be exposed, to talk and to interview amazing women and each of them has enlightened me. Their stories have become my stories and they have contributed to shape my vision of the world, a world which is becoming more and more “female centric”.
On November 14th, 2024, just before her concert at the Philharmonie Luxembourg, I had the incredible privilege of interviewing Leyla McCalla, an artist I would define as the symbol of “Girls United!”. During our conversation, we have discussed about her youth in New York City as the daughter of Haitian emigrants and activists, her first steps into the music world, her inspiration and activism and, of course, about the role of female artists today.
Q.: You are born in New York City to Haitian emigrants and activists. Could you tell me more about your family, their activism and how they have inspired you?
L.M.: While I was growing up my father was the director for an organization called “the National Organization for Haitian Rights” which did a lot of work advocating for both Haitian refugees and immigrants in the United States and Haitian people living in Haiti. When I was at the elementary school, my mother went back to Law School and became an immigration lawyer and was also the founder of a Women’s Rights organization. I really grew up in a context of understanding human rights, understanding some of the challenges facing Haitian immigrants in the United States such as discrimination, prejudice, and the general environment of ignorance and xenophobia that my parents were fighting against through their work. As I grew older, I started to put the pieces together, also by reading about Haitian history and I was astounded about how much ignorance there is about Haiti significance in the world.
Q.: Some musicians like to say that they did not choose the instruments they play, but that “it’s the instrument itself that chose them”. Was it the case for you and the banjo? Would you like to tell me more about how you started to play this instrument and the other instruments that you play?
L.M.: My main instrument and the instrument I have been training the most is the cello. I started playing this instrument in the public school system and I really had this feeling that it chose me because at that time I had no idea what a cello was. However, the more I played it the more I got stuck with it. To be honest, I was awful for years (Laughs) and then I started taking private lessons, becoming serious about it. I got to study with an amazing cellist, André Emelianoff from the Julliard School. I was around 13 years old when I started developing a real identity as a professional musician. I also went to a music camp and one of my friends there showed me how to play some chords on the guitar. It was around the time when internet became “a thing”, and this helped me to learn how to read the guitar tablature. I got to ask my parents to get me a guitar. The banjo is the most recent edition and the most powerful means of expression also for a lot of history I have been exploring. The banjo that I play was used in a lot of traditional New Orleans jazz. It is a jazz kind of banjo. Around the time I started playing the banjo – around thirteen/fourteen years ago – I discovered that there is a history of banjo being played in Haiti and this is what became the basis for a lot of records that I started to mine and a lot of ancient songs that I started to learn. I really like that this style of music called “Troubadour” which is kind of countryside, secular folk music from Haiti, because it is very banjo driven. It was like a fascinating instrument that allowed me to be in the middle of an historical context I was not aware of. It is hard to not believe in a sort of divine intervention.
Q.: As you said, your songs are always linked to your story and to your activism. How important is for you to tell these stories and to create a legacy through your music?
L.M.: I think that the telling of the stories is the most important thing that I do. I love music, I love understanding music and finding all these different means of expression. I love this process, but I am very attached to narrative and inspiration. Music doesn’t really come without a story that I am trying to tell or a thought that I am trying to unravel.
Q.: Talking about your most recent album, “Sun Without the Heat”. I read that you took lyrical inspiration from the writings of Black feminist Afrofuturist thinkers including Octavia Butler, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and adrienne maree brown. Can you tell me more about this album and if/how it is different from your previous works, like “The Capitalist Blues” for example?
L.M.: When I started conceptualizing “Sun Without the Heat” I felt like I was jumping off the creative cliff. I had just created this record “Breaking Up the Thermometer” which was a very intensive exploration of the lives and legacies of Haitian journalists in the 80’s and 90’s and I was thinking a lot about political implications of what it means to have a society that represses the truth. I am still thinking about it, and I will probably think about it forever. I didn’t know that “Sun Without the Heat” would have been the title of the album, until I finished recording all the songs. I really started to feel like there was an opportunity for me to redefine myself artistically to explore some sonic territory that has gone unexplored and to figure out what I wanted to say about life, my life, this political moment, and my experience within not only the context of identity but ideals that I want to believe in. While you are living under capitalism, racism, and xenophobia, what does true liberation look like? Those were the questions I was thinking about. At the same time, I was also grieving a lot, having lost my brother, and going through a divorce, being a single mom with three kids. My work is creatively ambitious, and it requires a lot of me. What is this process of grow and decay? What is my humanity asking for? I read adrienne maree brown’s book “Pleasure Activism” years ago and it was the first time that I felt like there was permission to be soft and gentle in our activism, meaning that we cannot be true activists if we are not in touch with what brings us pleasure. I thought that it was so radical. These were not the ideals my parents were guided by. Maybe joy, but pleasure?…Especially for women, pleasure is always associated to “shame” or “objectification”. I started thinking about that and I wanted to take more into her writing, so I continued with her book “Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds”. In the intro to the book, she says the before reading the beginning of her book, you have to read Octavia Butlers’ book “Parable of the Sower”, because she explains the philosophy for life, spirituality and guidance and how to cope with not only change but literally the end of times possibly in a very captivating way. I grew up with Haitian parents, so having a woman who is a science fiction writer saying: “God is change” and think about the cosmology of that was really fascinating to me. I was talking to a friend of mine who is also an abolitionist and she told me if I had read Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ book “Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals”. And then, I started thinking: “That’s how I want to feel…Undrowned! I should read that book”. It is a super poetic book. It is an exploration of marine mammals from the Black feminist perspective, looking at their survival mechanism and the way they organize themselves community-wise, the way they give birth, the way they nurture their offsprings. I felt mirrored in many ways. One of the main questions of emergence strategy is: “Do you see yourself as a part of nature?” I think that nature has always been a part of my writing and my songwriting, but I think that the process of making this record has allowed me to dig in deeper into that. And then, I read Susan Raffo’s book: “Liberated to the Bone: Histories. Bodies. Futures”, a book about healing both at an individual level but also at a societal level. She talks a lot about the medical and industrial context in the United States and its foundations being a genocidal project, about the lack of acknowledgement of these old wounds that never get healed. This is what I got the line: “Can’t have the sun without the heat.” This song serves as a reminder of the continued work for social change and the struggle that we still bear. “These wounds are so old.” You can also feel it in your experience. If I don’t heal from certain experiences, then I can’t have healthy relationship, I can’t be a better parent, I can’t be a better person. All these things went into a lot of my writing.
Q: Talking about songwriting you said: “Songwriting is a modality to tell the stories that need to be told” (…) Sometimes these are painful stories to tell.” Music is such a powerful tool reaching and touching people’s souls. How do you feel about having such a tool in your hands and about affecting so many people with your songs?
L.M.: I think that right now, part of my work as an artist is undoing a lot of patriarchal thinking about my work. I have always struggled with the “imposter syndrome” and I am always questioning the validity of my stories and the validity of what I have to say. This is why I have leaned so heavily on history because it is much easier to tell the story about what happened than it is to tell what is happening in your heart, in your mind or in your soul. On the other hand, the heart, mind, and soul are what people connect to. I take that work very seriously and, at the same time, it is a constant undoing of the ego getting in the way. I try to be honest with my songwriting and my storytelling. A lot of being an artist for me is “How do I undo the things I have been told in order to discover the truth of the things I think I have to do or say?”. When I am writing, I am looking for a transformative experience for myself and, hopefully, other people resonate with that.
Q.: I have recently written a few articles on “democratizing arts through music”, trying to answer the questions “does music belong to art?” and “does art belong the music?” and I had this urgency because I realized that sometimes people do not tend to think about music as an “art form” but only as a “background noise”. For your 2022 album, “Breaking the Termometer”, there was a multidisciplinary music, dance and theater work commissioned to you by Duke Performances. Can you tell me more about this project and if you think that music can be the right tool to democratize even other art forms?
L.M.: I was commissioned to create a multimedia performance based on the archives of Radio Haiti. I was approached by Duke University which has a performing arts program and a pretty incredible library with a lot of archives. The fact that the Radio Haiti archive is housed at the Duke University feels like a small miracle because these tapes were stored in Haiti for many years and a lot of them were damaged or destroyed by the paramilitary troops during the Duvalier regime in the 80s and they somehow survived. That by itself is a story. Duke University absorbed these archives to their library. They hired an archivist to digitize the archive. When I came upon this, the whole project was two years into the process. I worked with the archivist, Laura Wagner, who was working on summarizing, and translating thousands and thousands of recordings, from Creole and French into English. Not full transcriptions, but summaries. And now that archive lives on their website and it is available to the public. I felt like I had such a privileged position. I was asked to interact with this archive and to make art. What an incredible thing! I would have said “yes!” before even knowing what it meant being asked to do that. It was such an incredible learning experience, not only because I was learning about this history, about the lives of these journalists, the things they were documenting, the importance of journalism in telling people stories, but also learning about collaborative art making with all these different media: dance, visual arts, theater. I found like I knew how to make music in a certain way, but I also quickly felt like this music really needed to be grounded in Haitian rhythms. I was working with a theater director, Kiyoko McCrae, and she said: “The way you talk about Haiti is very interesting”. And this was how I became a character in this piece and in the story. I feel like the music provides this emotional subtlety that the other art forms blend with and interact with. Music was really the glue for the piece. I feel like it enhanced the moments. We worked with an incredible dancer, Sheila Anozier, based in New York and the music was such a big part in animating her movements and indicating what movements should be part of the whole thing. The music was critical, emotional information throughout it. After performing this piece several times, I felt strongly that there should be an album because of that exact reason. I wanted it to be experienced by a larger audience. It allowed me to continue telling these stories. I think music is so powerful because it reaches these emotional spaces that are very much about us connecting with our humanity. I think there is a reason why we listen to music as part of a ceremonial thing, or different kinds of music for different events or environments. I do feel like music is very healing for human beings. It’s a language. It’s a language that doesn’t have any boundaries. You can speak any other language, but if you hear a sad song worldwide, you know it’s sad.
Q.: What do we have to expect from your concert this evening? Who are the other musicians who are going to be with you on stage?
L.M.: I am accompanied my long-time bandmates Nahum Zdybel on guitar and Pete Olynciw on bass. Caíto Sánchez, an old friend of mine, on percussion and drums is the newest member of the band. This is his first European tour with us. I am so excited about this band because it really feels like a family for me. People coming to our shows always remark that we play so well together. The songs are so special but it’s also the way they are brought to life by the band that is really fitting. They just bring so much talent and intention. We are going to present a lot of songs from “Sun Without the Heat”, some of the songs from “Breaking the Thermometer” and some songs from another project that I have done. It’s really a good combination.
Q.: What is the role of artists, but especially female artists today?
L.M.: I think the role of female artists is to do whatever they want to do, and say whatever they want to say, without fear and without feeling responsible for being anything other than who they are.
The artists
Leyla McCalla vocals, cello, banjo, guitar
Nahum Zdybel guitar
Pete Olynciw bass
Caíto Sánchez percussion, drums
