The rustic new album Full Circle from Charleston classical guitarist Grace McNally rises and sets like the sun, peaceful and illuminating. The delicate melodies and mounting rhythms heard on the eight songs are the product of McNally’s five-year journey of writing, arranging and recording the material.
“Ultimately, the album is a celebration of a journey coming full circle personally, but also celebrating the common ground in the music that comes from West Africa, Charleston, Central America, Cuba, South America and Brazil,” McNally told the Charleston City Paper.
The album highlights the musical continuities McNally experienced in her travels between West Africa and North, Central and South America. Some of the lyricism and vocals heard on Full Circle are from the creative stores of her fellow local musicians, including Afro-Cuban percussionist/vocalist Gino Castillo and electronic artist and poet Marcus Amaker.
Amaker’s words unveil a deep remembering as he speaks on “Open Door”: “Home can be opening the door to a heritage that is a water length away from what you know, but you find your fingerprints in a foreign land and answer the call in a place that has always been calling your name.”
McNally’s original arrangements are layered with vocal segments from a cappella singing group, The Plantation Singers, Castillo on percussion, Brett Belanger on acoustic bass, Abdiel Iriarte on piano, Tim Khayat on bass, Jonathan Lovett on keys and Ron Wiltrout on drums.
While McNally plays mainly electric guitar on the new album, she also plays a Brazilian hand drum called the pandeiro on some tracks.
“Throughout the album, I’m quoting other [instruments] — like in ‘Open Door’ there’s some berimbau style, which is a Brazilian percussion instrument. I think there’s a very raw element to the album
— maybe that’s my way of being ‘punk.’ I’m like, ‘It’s just gonna be what it is.’ ”
Full Circle also features a cover of “All The Things You Are” by Brazilian guitarist Baden Powell.
“He draws from so many different styles like indigenous, classical and Afro Brazilian,” McNally said of Powell.
“The original piece, ‘Give Me Water,’ I actually wrote in my childhood bedroom when I was living at home working in 2017,” she said. “It was the first song I wrote on this album. I always pictured a gospel choir with that song when I wrote it. So that’s what drew me to The Plantation Singers.”
The recording took about three years, with a couple tracks laid at Fairweather Studio with Omar Colon, five songs at Truphonic Studio with Elliot Elsey and one song at Castillo’s home studio.
Broadening musical horizons
McNally also hosts a segment on Ohm Radio 96.3 at 5 p.m. every Monday called Travel Notes.
“Travel Notes is a show exploring the ways in which we’re all connected through music,” she said. “It’s something I’m very passionate about: using music as a medium to find cultural connections to places that you might normally not — like how blues from the American South connects to West African kora music; or how there’s psychedelic music in Cambodia because of the Vietnam War. For me, it’s finding these random pop-ups of genres that blossom in other places because of world events or cultural clashes and diasporas.”
She said she loves Ohm Radio because it’s a voice for Charleston if listeners wants to get to know the diverse communities within the city.
“We have Marcela Rabens new show Ritmo Latino on Tuesdays that’s all in Spanish, and she brings in Latin musicians from the Hispanic community here. There’s the Black History Talks with Dr. Bernard Powers on Monday. We have Gullah Voices on Fridays with Lynnette White from The Plantation Singers. There’s Children’s Hour on Saturday morning. We have everything from business and environmental sustainability to dubstep,” she said, laughing. “It’s really eclectic.”
She said although she’s been more focused on the album release lately than diving into new songwriting, it all feels like part of the creative process.
“It’s hard to write when you feel like you have to force it,” she said. “Sometimes I think it’s almost better to put it down and step away. Because it does come back. Trust. There’s a lot of trust in the creative process.
“Music is life. It can be so therapeutic to write, and it’s the gift that keeps on giving because someone else can hear it and be like, ‘Yeah, that was the space I needed.’ That’s the beautiful thing about music and the arts.”
Meet the musicians behind Full Circle at a free event at Clerk’s Coffee at 6:30 p.m. May 4. Visit EventBrite.com for tickets to the album release party at 7 p.m. May 7.
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