From her Langston Hughes inspired album “Vari-Colored Songs” Leyla McCalla describes a racist southern setting with melancholic acoustic melodies in her track titled “Song for a Dark Girl”. McCalla tells a sad love story of her lover getting abused then lynched while her heart breaks. As a result she is conflicted in her religion as she does not know what to believe in after her lover was brutally killed. McCalla portrays the real-life experience for those with black lovers who got lynched in the early south.

— Khara Vassell