‘Hello’ mini bundle of joy

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This cover image released by Diary Records/Island Records shows ‘Hello Happiness’, latest release by Chaka Khan. (AP)

McCalla puts down cello

Chaka Khan, “Hello Happiness” (Diary/Island Records)

With just seven songs in 28 minutes, Chaka Khan’s “Hello Happiness” is a little bundle of joy, emphasis on the little. But you shouldn’t feel shortchanged.

Consider it instead as a corrective to all those overlong, overblown collections of incessant sonic doodles and listen up as the iconic singer makes her feelings and intentions clear from the start: “Music makes me say/Goodbye sadness/Hello happiness”.

Khan’s clarity of purpose comes on the back of a dramatic awakening after the 2016 death of Prince, a close collaborator, which helped her confront her own addiction to prescription drugs.

The title track is a good sampler for the rest of the record – deep grooves, dancefloor beats and Khan’s excellent voice, which, even decades since her days with Chicago funksters Rufus and a dozen years after her last solo release, has not lost the ability to create its own flow while forming a tight connection to each song.

The production from Switch and Sarah Ruba Taylor applies just the right amount of now sounds to classic disco and funk structures, with some space judiciously reserved for rapturous reggae on “Isn’t That Enough” and a gliding acoustic guitar and tap-tap-tapping percussion on cozy closer “Ladylike”.

Leyla McCalla, “The Capitalist Blues” (PIAS/Jazz Village)

Look, Ma, no cello!

After a pair of albums on which New York-born Leyla McCalla accompanied herself on her trademark instrument, “The Capitalist Blues” finds her on the tenor banjo and electric guitar, deepening her musical ties to New Orleans, her adopted hometown, while further referencing her Haitian heritage.

McCalla spices up her takes on relationships, everyday struggles and even the Syrian civil war with an alluring mix of styles, from R&B and boogie to zydeco and beyond.

Recorded at Preservation Hall, a stalwart of the city’s traditional jazz scene, the title track shows off the New Orleans side of things, not for the only time, with a strolling tempo, a rumbling tuba and worries that giving it all leaves you with little left to lose.

“Money Is King”, from Trinidad legend Neville Marcano aka “The Growling Tiger”, also deals with material inequality, which is also the focus of “Mize Pa Dous” (“Poverty Isn’t Sweet”), written and sung by McCalla in Haitian Creole. (AP)

By Pablo Gorondi

This news has been read 7410 times!

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