Event

Dom Flemons with Layla McCalla

On stage, Flemons rolls from one instrument to another with a fearless attitude toward tradition and repertoire. As he now reflects, The unique experience I had getting into the old-time music really informed the way I have been able to process a lot of it. A lot of people ask me, how do you do this old-time music and have it stay contemporary to you as a person? What people forget is that on stage I might be playing music thats 100 years-old, but that doesnt mean my ears are only listening to music thats 100 years-old. I got into this via old rock and roll, sixties rock and folk and went back from there. A couple of things got me into thinking about how to smash all of it together, particularly Mike Seegers way of taking different kinds of traditional music and putting them together to make new music. And being into the songsters like Lead Belly and Henry Thomas, I heard them and knew they werent doing straight blues like Robert Johnson and Skip James. I always wondered how it all fit, so when I met Joe and found out about the black string-band stuff, that was where the connections started happening these songsters fit into this broader string band and folk music tradition and then you have things like blues and jazz, and even gospel music, wrapped up in it.

Named 2013s Album of the Year by the London Sunday Times and Songlines magazine, Leyla McCallas debut album, Vari-Colored Songs: A Tribute to Langston Hughes, made a profound impression upon all who heard it. The record, which set some of Hughes poems to Leylas music, and also included original compositions and Haitian folk songs, received rapturous reviews for its haunting mixture of music and message.

A Haitian-American who sings in French, Haitian Creole and English, Leyla McCalla plays cello, tenor banjo and guitar. Deeply influenced by traditional Creole, Cajun and Haitian music, as well as by American jazz and folk, her music is at once earthy, elegant, soulful and witty it vibrates with three centuries of history, yet also feels strikingly fresh, distinctive and contemporary.