Layla McCalla "Vari-Colored Songs"

For a debut album by a young musician who is not overly well-known, "Vari-Colored Songs" by Leyla McCalla is a surprisingly mature release, perhaps because of her diverse influences and experiences.

Born in New York City to Haitian emigrant parents, Leyla grew up in New Jersey. When she was 8 she told her parents she wanted to learn cello and by the time she was in her teens, she knew she wanted to be a professional musician. As a teenager, she spent a couple of years in Accra, Ghana before returning to New York to complete a degree in cello performance and chamber music at NYU.

After college, she moved to New Orleans and, armed with Bach's Cello Suites, played on the streets in the French Quarter to earn a crust. She describes her move to New Orleans as the best decision she ever made. She felt instantly at home and it was there that she met the Carolina Chocolate Drops, with whom she toured for two and a half years. She regards this experience as her Master's qualification, teaching her how to do interviews and perform on the radio, and how to take care of herself when constantly on the road.

She has developed a sound with her cello that is totally unique - apart from using the bow, she strums it, finger-picks it and smacks the body for percussion. Which brings us to this debut CD. The album, which has been several years in the making, was given a push after a successful Kickstarter campaign in which she surpassed her $5,000 goal by four times to ultimately raise over $20,000. It consists of compositions she has written to Langston Hughes poetry, Haitian folk songs and original pieces. When Leyla was 16 her father gave her a book of the poetry of Langston Hughes, iconic African American poet. She was also inspired by Hughes' two auto-biographies and she describes him as having "a beautiful way of bringing complex ideas and history and culture into words that are very human and very simple and very-relatable."

 There are many different moods evoked by the songs on this CD, from the dark introspective tones of "Girl", "Too Blue" and "Kamen Sa W Fe?" to up-tempo uplifting Haitian folk songs sung in the pidgin French of her parents' homeland, such as "Mesi Bondye", "Manman Mwen", "Latibonit" and "Rose Marie". The playing is always exquisite, with Rhiannon Giddens and Hubby Jenkins of the Carolina Chocolate Drops along for the ride, as well as New Orleans’ own Don Vappie on tenor banjo and Luke Winslow King on guitar. They all complement McCalla's own talents so well. But the standout piece is the opener, one of the Langston Hughes poems set to music called "Heart of Gold". It features a number of over-dubbed cello parts and simply gorgeous vocals by McCalla.