A Nashville-based chamber ensemble, chatterbird, performed with songwriter and cellist Leyla McCalla (Our Native Daughters, Carolina Chocolate Drops) last week at the National Museum of African American Music’s Roots Theater. Following the performance, a post-show Q&A, moderated by Katie Rainge-Briggs, NMAAM’s Collections and Exhibitions Manager, took place with McCalla and Nashville-based poet and teacher, Ciona Rouse.
McCalla and chatterbird creatively reimagined her album, Vari-Colored Songs, a tribute to the poetry of Langston Hughes. Recently re-released on Smithsonian Folkways, the album is a celebration of the complexity of Black culture and identity, and a tribute to the legacy of poet and thinker Langston Hughes. Take a look back through the photos below.
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