“THE capitalist system in the US is bigger than Trump,” says Leyla McCalla.

“It has placed a disproportionate amount of power in the hands of corporations and lobbyists who buy off our congresspeople and senators to affect policy and legislation.

“With Trump at the helm, because of his bombastic and ridiculous personality, these sharks are circling with renewed vigour but they’ve always been there. That’s overwhelming.”

Given those sentiments, it’s no surprise that the latest album of the classical and folk musician is titled Capitalist Blues.

Born in New York but with her roots in Haiti and her home in New Orleans, she’s a singer, songwriter, cellist and banjoist of powerful inventiveness and relevance, as anyone who heard her in her recent King’s Place concert in London will testify.

Her grandfather edited a New York-based Haitian socialist newspaper and her father led the National Coalition for Haitian Rights.

Rebellion is in her blood and resistance and beauty run through her music, in songs combining a sharp wit with an essential optimism.

That’s typified on the number Mize Pa Dous, with the contradictory line “an expensive life is one of poverty.”

It reflects, she says, her in interest in exploring the ways that people feel caught in the system and stuck in the cycle of poverty — “the Catch-22s of our daily lives.”

Yet, she says, the Blues are uplifting music. “Born out of struggle but also strength, which is what makes them very human. For we too are full of contradictions and are imperfect. That is definitely good fodder for songwriting.”

Her pride in Haitian history and language surges in her words.

“The Haitian revolution is such an unexplored part of black history. We are not always ready to accept the violence and barbarity of slavery and the force needed to abolish it,” she says.

“That revolution was violent and showed the world that slaves are capable of organising and overcoming colonialism and white supremacy. Haitian Kreyol language is a combination of African, Taino, French, Spanish and English words. It was born out of slavery and originally spoken by slaves so they could communicate amongst themselves.

“The language galvanised the forces of the revolution and plantation owners and masters could not understand it. So I see Kreyol as a  language of survival and resistance, which is why I sing in it.”

Her music straddles the Caribbean and the US with Money is King, written by Trinidadian calypsonian Growling Tiger, pure calypso. On Settle Down, she sings of how the forces of the status quo try to keep ordinary people complicit.

“Music touches us in our hearts and minds and that is where change needs to occur before we see it enacted in our political environments,” she asserts. “It can offer different perspectives without having to read a book or hear the news.”

McCalla loves New Orleans, still recovering from the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina, with a passion.

“It is one of the most spiritually deep places on Earth and music is one of the threads that ties the people to the city,” she says. “Can a city ever recover from the gross negligence when the government fails to take responsibility for its citizens?

“I fell in love with New Orleans because it gave me the inspiration to do what I’m doing with music now. It made me realise the connections between my Haitian and American identities. What keeps me in the city is its people — the way we greet each other, play, dance, laugh and cry together.

“Its culture is rich and ubiquitous and if New Orleans wants you to stay with her, you will.”

Listen to Capitalist Blues and you’ll surely stay with this unique artist as her career develops.