In 2022, Leyla McCalla delivered ‘Breaking the Thermometer‘, a tribute to the activist and Radio Haiti owner Jean Dominique and his wife and fellow journalist Michéle Montas. As well as being ‘an impassioned defence of democracy in present-day Haiti’, the album was also, as Thomas Blake described in his album review, “a kind of quest towards personal understanding, an attempt to claim a heritage from a political administration that would seek to deny that heritage.” McCalla has today announced her new album, Sun Without the Heat (April 12th via ANTI- Pre-order here), a record described as playful and full of joy while holding the pain and tension of transformation.
Like its predecessor, Sun Without Heat draws from a similarly fascinating backdrop of great thinkers, writers, speakers and inspirations, but this time with a much more joyous and playful undercurrent and more of Leyla’s own bright personality, not to mention her masterful performances on all host of instruments and vocals.
On the album McCalla embraces Brazilian Tropicalisimo, Afrobeat and Ethiopian folk, and we are treated to two singles from the album, the first of which is accompanied by a music video directed by Zuri Obi.
“Scaled to Survive” is about being born and the connection we have to our parents, particularly our mothers. Leyla was inspired by Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ powerful book Undrowned, where Gumbs looks to the transformative lessons of marine mammals as recipes for survival – ones that reach across species. “Thank you for laughing me into your portal,” McCalla quotes Gumbs as she sings to parents and to those who parent us beyond blood. Watch the accompanying music video below featuring McCalla’s own children and their friends.
Throughout the song are some potent lines: “The truth may be thin but it yearns for the light” and “…life is not a straight line”, a reminder that many of us remain on a quest for understanding and fulfilment.
In the second new single, “Tree”, McCalla shares a fictionalized fable about a woman overlooking the Mediterranean Sea who turns herself into a tree because she doubts that she can ever be loved. The musical conversation between Shawn Myers’s drums and Nahum Zdybel’s psychedelic fuzz guitar comes to the forefront, heating up to a sped-up tropicalisma-inspired samba. “Tree” reminds us that the you and the me of this album are never singular but are always shaped and healed by a collective, the spirit of the cypher.
In addition to Gumbs, McCalla draws lyrical inspiration from the writings of Black feminist Afrofuturist thinkers Octavia Butler and adrienne maree brown. Like these authors, McCalla looks to songwriting to increase faith and hope, encourage community thinking, and catalyse personal transformation. “Songwriting is a modality to tell the stories that need to be told”, she explains. “Sometimes these are painful stories to tell”.
The album’s title is also a literary reference which pulls from Frederick Douglass’s 1857 speech to a largely white crowd of abolitionists six years before the Emancipation Proclamation. His words echo in the song: “You want the crops without the plow / You want the rain without the thunder / You want the ocean without the roar of its waters.” Douglass’s point — which McCalla weaves into the song’s central message —is that liberation and equity are not possible without committing to transformative action.
“We all want the warmth of the sun but not everybody wants to feel the heat,” McCalla explains. “You have to have both.”
Sun Without the Heat Tracklisting
- Open the Road
- Scaled to Survive
- Take Me Away
- So I’ll Go
- Tree
- Sun Without the Heat
- Tower
- Love We Had
- Give Yourself a Break
- I Want to Believe
Pre-Order Sun Without The Heat
Next month, McCalla will host a three-day residency at the famed Lincoln Center, and she has been confirmed for performances at this spring’s Big Ears and New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festivals. Upcoming dates, including an album release show at Joe’s Pub in New York City, are listed below:
ON TOUR
2/10 – Creteil, France @ Sons D’hiver
2/16 – 2/18 – New York, NY @ Lincoln Center
3/1 – 3/8 – Miami, FL @ Cayamo
3/22 – 3/24 – Knoxville, TN @ Big Ears Festival
4/9 – New Orleans, LA @ Broadside
4/11 – Washington, DC @ The Kennedy Center
4/12 – New York, NY @ Joe’s Pub
4/13 – Albany, NY @ The Egg
4/28 – Tallahassee, FL @ Word of South Festival
4/20 – North Charleston, SC @ High Water Festival
4/26 – New Orleans, LA @ New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival