Vari-Colored Songs: A Tribute to Langston Hughes

by Leyla McCalla

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PJ EVERY song here is a classic, do not pass on the chance to have a copy of this superior music release !

Harrie Snels Sounds like sunny weather, despite the tragic story that lies underneath. Beautiful poems, lyrics and acoustic arrangements. I keep turning the record and listening. Favorite track: Rose Marie.

nurseratchedsafan This is stunningly beautiful, poignant, fragile songs and performances

Gregor Luzius Your album is a ray of sunshine. So beautiful.

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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Remastered audio on standard weight black LP in a single sleeve jacket featuring redesigned packaging from the original 2014 release. Liner notes included. NOTE: "As I Grew Older / Dreamer" only available as a digital download song.

Includes unlimited streaming of Vari-Colored Songs: A Tribute to Langston Hughes via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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Purchasable with gift card

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1.	Heart of Gold 02:59	buy track
2.	When I Can See the Valley 02:10	buy track
3.	Mèsi Bondye 02:26	buy track
4.	Girl 02:51	buy track
5.	Kamèn sa w fè? 02:21	buy track
6.	Too Blue 02:28	buy track
7.	Manman Mwen 03:19	buy track
8.	Song for a Dark Girl 02:49	buy track
9.	As I Grew Older / Dreamer 03:50	buy track
10.	Love Again Blues 02:39	buy track
11.	Rose Marie 02:58	buy track
12.	Latibonit 03:49	buy track
13.	Search 03:20	buy track
14.	Lonely House 03:27	buy track
15.	Changing Tide 03:03	buy track

about

Leyla McCalla’s 'Vari-Colored Songs: A Tribute to Langston Hughes' is a celebration of the complexity of Black culture and identity, and a tribute to the legacy of poet and thinker Langston Hughes. A songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, McCalla sets Hughes’ poems to her own spare yet profound compositions. She juxtaposes these with arrangements of folk songs from Haiti, the first independent Black nation and the homeland of her parents, tapping into the nuances of Black experience. McCalla’s music elegantly weaves Haitian influences together with American folk music, just as Hughes incorporated Black vernacular into his remarkable poetry, and the way the Haitian Kreyòl is a beacon for the survival of African identity through the brutal legacy of colonialism. This is music of reclamation, imbued with a quiet power that grapples with the immense weight of history.

"Vari-Colored Songs" was originally had a limited release in 2014, with the New York Times proclaiming that “[McCalla’s] magnificently transparent music holds tidings of family, memory, solitude and the inexorability of time: weighty thoughts handled with the lightest touch imaginable.” The recording is being brought to a wider audience by Smithsonian Folkways at a time when the history McCalla explores is more relevant than ever. As she states in the album’s liner notes, “The wisdom and truth that Langston Hughes continues to provide us through his prolific output inspires us to celebrate the assumedly mundane and stigmatized parts of our society. The future has always been uncertain, and it has always been up to us to push for the changes that we want to see in the world.”

credits

released October 16, 2020

Produced by Leyla McCalla and Joseph Dejarnette
Recorded by Joseph Dejarnette at Studio 808a, Floyd, VA, and Earl Sciouneaux at Piety Studios, New Orleans, LA
Mixed by Joseph Dejarnette
“As I Grew Older / Dreamer” recorded by Nikhil Yerawadekar in Bushwick in 2010
Mastered by Bruce Barielle
Tintype photos by Tim Duffy; Haiti photos by Leyla McCalla
Annotated by Leyla McCalla and Jean-Pierre Bruneau
Smithsonian Folkways executive producers: Huib Schippers and John Smith
Production manager: Mary Monseur
Production assistant: Kate Harrington
Editorial assistance by Carla Borden
Art direction, design and layout by Visual Dialogue

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Leyla McCalla New Orleans, Louisiana

leylamccalla.com

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