Vari-colored songs : a tribute to Langston Hughes

"A sometime member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Leyla McCalla brings an array of influences to her unusual debut. Principally it's a tribute to Langston Hughes, feted poet of the 1920s Harlem renaissance, with Hughes's laconic verse set to simple arrangements of banjo and guitar, though the classically trained McCalla also weaves in cello, most often as a plucked, rhythmic pulse. Raised in New York by Haitian parents, she now lives in New Orleans, and five antique Creole songs, in that baffling French hybrid, provide a rootsy counterpoint to Hughes's elegant rhymes. McCalla's light, unfussy vocals complete a charming, resonant spell".

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"While busking and playing on the street corners and in the bars and clubs [of New Orleans], [McCalla] fell in love with Louisiana Creole culture, and coupled with her further explorations of Haiti's traditional Creole folk music, she developed a strong and grounded musical vision, part old and traditional and part bohemian intellectual. As this debut solo album (she was featured on the Carolina Chocolate Drops' Leaving Eden album and has toured extensively with them) shows, it's a mix that McCalla balances well, with most of the tracks featuring her musical arrangements of various Langston Hughes poems, along with striking personal versions of a couple of traditional Haitian folk songs ... McCalla's voice is warm and just slightly jazz-tinged, and she plays sparse tenor banjo and acoustic guitar on some of the cuts here, but it is her cello playing that gives the album its unique sound, all warm and round and ominous somehow, taking the stark arrangements to deepemotionalplaces".

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"McCalla's solo career is off to a splendid start"".