Music show: Leyla McCalla blends diasporic sounds on ‘Sun without the Heat’

In this music show on arts24, Jennifer Ben Brahim is joined on set by American-Haitian multi-instrumentalist Leyla McCalla. She’s on tour with her fifth studio album “Sun Without the Heat”. It blends sounds from the diaspora – Afrobeat, Ethiopian modalities, Brazilian tropicalism, folk and American blues. The title of the record is a reference to a 1857 Frederick Douglass speech made six years before the Emancipation Proclamation. The songs on the record juxtapose grief and joy and despite being released in the spring, it reflects the current mood in the aftermath of the US presidential election.