A bilingual multi-instrumentalist and alumna of GRAMMY award-winning African-American string band the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Leyla McCalla is at once earthy, elegant, soulful and witty, producing a distinctive sound that reflects the union of her roots and experience.

McCalla’s music vibrates with three centuries of history, yet also feels strikingly fresh, distinctive, and contemporary, sonically blending New Orleans (her adopted home) and Haitian influences and rhythms, with lyrics sung in English, French and Haitian Creole.

McCalla’s widely-acclaimed collaborative project, Songs of Our Native Daughters (Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell), was released via Smithsonian Folkways in 2019. The album pulled inspiration from past sources to create a reinvented slave narrative, confronting sanitized views about America’s history of slavery, racism, and misogyny from a powerful, modern Black female perspective.