New Orleans-based, New York-born, Haitian raised. Cellist Leyla McCalla's succinctly elegant folk music is her way of processing the nation’s current political environment, where many of the issues are financial, but they’re rarely simply financial. The former Carolina Chocolate Drops member deepens her examination of Creole identities by bringing together her voice and her cello with fiddle, clarinet, piano and electric guitar. At the forefront of her work is her Haitian identity, singing many of her tunes in Creole, which she classifies as a language of resistance, especially as she explores its connections to New Orleans.