Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah (formerly Christian Scott), is a 2-time Edison Award winning & 5-time Grammy Award nominated musician, composer & producer. He is the nephew of jazz innovator & legendary sax man, Donald Harrison, Jr. His musical tutelage began under the direction of his uncle at the age of 13. After graduating from the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) in 2001, he received a full tuition scholarship to Berklee College of Music where he earned a degree in Professional Music and Film Scoring 30 months later. Since 2002, Chief has released 12 critically acclaimed studio recordings, 3 live albums and one greatest hits collection. An artist known for developing the harmonic convention known as the “forecasting cell” and for his use of an un-voiced tone in his playing, emphasizing breath over vibration at the mouthpiece. The technique is known as his “whisper technique.” Adjuah is also the progenitor of “Stretch Music,” a jazz rooted, genre blind musical form that attempts to “stretch” jazz’s rhythmic, melodic & harmonic conventions to encompass multiple musical forms, languages & cultures. The 2015 release of the recording Stretch Music marked the partnership between Adjuah’s Stretch Music record label and Ropeadope Records. Stretch Music is also the first recording to have an accompanying app, for which Adjuah won the prestigious JazzFM Innovator of the year Award in 2016. The Stretch Music App is an interactive music player that allows musicians the ability to completely control the practicing, listening & learning experience by customizing the player to fit their specific needs and goals. In 2017, Adjuah released 3 albums, collectively titled The Centennial Trilogy, that debuted at number one on iTunes. The albums’ launch commemorated the 100th anniversary of the first Jazz recordings of 1917. The series is, at its core, a sobering re-evaluation of the social political realities of the world through sound. It speaks to a litany of issues that continue to plague the collective human experience, such as slavery in America via the Prison Industrial Complex, food insecurity, xenophobia, immigration, climate change, racial and sexual orientation and gender inequality, fascism and the return of the demagogue. The trilogy includes Ruler Rebel, Diaspora and Emancipation Procrastination. Each recording vividly depicts Adjuah’s new vision and sound via a new production methodology that stretches trap music with West African and New Orleanian Black Indian masking tradition musical styles. Ruler Rebel’s release coincided with the first annual Stretch Music Festival at Harlem Stage in New York. The Stretch Music Festival, created/curated by Chief Adjuah for 3 consecutive years, explores the boundaries of Stretch, Jazz, Trap, & Alternative Rock with some of music’s most poised & fiery rising stars. Since 2006, Chief has worked with a number of notable artists, including Prince, Thom Yorke, McCoy Tyner, Marcus Miller, Eddie Palmieri, rappers Mos Def (Yasin Bey), Talib Kweli, & Vic Mensa, as well as heralded poet & musician Saul Williams. This amazing being is a scion of New Orleans’ 1st family of art & culture, the Harrisons, and the grandson of legendary Big Chief, Donald Harrison Sr., who led four nations in the City’s masking tradition. The HBO series, Treme, borrowed the storyline and the name “Guardians of the Flame” from the group Adjuah began “masking” as a member of with his grandfather in 1989. In 2018, Tulane University’s acclaimed Amistad Research Center announced its archive of the Donald Harrison, Sr. legacy papers to highlight the Harrison/Scott/Nelson family’s contributions to the arts, activism, and African diaspora cultural expressions. The Harrison family’s story has been documented by Oscar winning director, the late Jonathan Demme, in his post-Hurricane Katrina filmic works. Dedicated to a number of causes that positively impact communities, Chief Adjuah gives his time & talents in service to several organizations which garnered him a place in Ebony Magazine’s 30 Young Leaders Under 30. Holding master classes, creating and participating in discussion panels, creating content, and purchasing instruments for youth music programs and individual youth musicians are all part of hiss community-based work. He has worked with Guardians Institute in New Orleans’ 9th Ward, which is dedicated to reading & fiscal literacy, cultural retention and a firm commitment to the participation of community elders & artists in uplifting and supporting youths in underserved areas of New Orleans.
Earlier in the year, I had the honor of getting to keep it real with Chief Adjuah ahead of the May 2nd event in Shannon Hall at the Wisconsin Union Theater. We get into what people in attendance can sorta/kinda plan for, as no one in the moments quite knows. We dive deep into the latest record on Ropeadope, ‘Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning’, his journey into Chiefdom and some of the practices and responsibilities it brings, and of course, we get heavy into Stretch Music and the idea of genre blindness (something I hope greenarrowradio brinGs with it). During this, we get talk frank about the way people do the things they can do or cannot do, and how opportunity needs to be able to be in front of all. With that also comes the the who do you get in your camp to help support your ideas (like Chief Adjuah’s Harp) and allow you those opportunities to grow as an artist and take the music where it takes you – Ropeadope Records has been that place of support and growth so we talk a bit about how that relationship went down and where it can go. We even found some time for him to build a mighty setlist. I try not to play favorites, but Chief Adjuah has been one of those artists that speaks to me – and now he has.
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