Music, Power And Politics Collide On Leyla McCalla's 'A Day for the Hunter'

Leyla McCalla has built her songwriting style around the cello, an instrument that's rarely central in folk and pop styles — and one she began her study of by accident. Growing up in New Jersey, she was required to participate in her school's music program, and in fourth grade she decided she'd play what she thought was a member of the woodwind family — something like the piccolo.

"And the first day of fourth grade, I go into the cafeteria and they have the percussion and the woodwinds and the brass and the strings, and I march right up to the woodwind table," she says. "I hear this woman screaming across the room, 'Leyla McCalla!' And I turned around and she just said, 'Cello.' That was the first time I had laid my eyes on it. I was like, whoa, the cello's a huge violin — I had no idea! And because it wasn't the popular instrument, I kind of got stuck playing it."

As an adult, McCalla spent time in New York but eventually relocated to New Orleans. She says she felt pulled to the city's music history; it was the kind of place where she could explore her own heritage and the sounds she could make on her cello that would bring it to life. On her latest album, A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey, she dives thoroughly into both.

"I had read a book called A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey by an ethnomusicologist named Gage Averill. And the book is about the intersections of music and power and politics in Haiti, which is something that's endlessly fascinating to me: My family is from Haiti, and it's a big source of my inspiration," she says. "But in the book he talks about a tradition of songwriting that erupted out of the various refugee crises of the '90s, where a lot of people were fleeing Haiti by boat — and I thought about the vulnerability of the position of feeling stuck in your country."

McCalla spoke with NPR's Rachel Martin about incorporating Haitian roots music into her work, and the moment she realized playing an orchestral instrument didn't mean she had to become a classical artist. Hear more of their conversation at the audio link.

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