Breaking the Thermometer

Description

The singer journeys through her Haitian roots in this sublime new album. Leyla McCalla finds inspiration in her past and present. Whether it's her Haitian heritage or her adopted city of New Orleans, she—a bilingual multi-instrumentalist and former member of the Grammy Award-winning African-American band Carolina Chocolate Drops—has managed to produce a distinctive sound that reflects the union of her roots and her experience. Leyla McCalla has produced a multidisciplinary work of music, dance, and theater, *Breaking the Thermometer*, which follows her personal journey as she discovers the history of Radio Haiti, the island's first radio station to broadcast news in Haitian Creole—the voice of the people. Through this juxtaposition of voices—personal and political, anecdotal and journalistic—McCalla expresses the enduring spirit of Haiti's marginalized poor in the face of centuries of political oppression. Creating *Breaking the Thermometer* involved listening to countless archival recordings of interviews conducted by Radio Haiti journalists, and McCalla specifically wrote "Fort Dimanche" after hearing a testimonial interview that Michele Montas—a former journalist and director of the station—had conducted with a survivor of Duvalier's political prison. This album is a kind of soundtrack to the play that Leyla McCalla wrote and performed for this work.