Artist: Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah
Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah (born March 31, 1983, (formerly Christian Scott), is an American jazz trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer.
He has been nominated for six Grammy Awards and is a two-time Edison Award winner. He has been named the Jazz FM Innovator of the Year and the Jazz Journalists Association Trumpeter of the Year. He has also received the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, the Changing Worlds Peace Maker Award, and the Doris Duke Performing Arts Award. Adjuah is the nephew of jazz saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr. Adjuah is the Chieftain of the Xodokan Nation of Maroons and Grand Griot of New Orleans, an honor bestowed by the Ashé Cultural Center as part of annual rites commemorating the Maafa.
Adjuah was born in 1983, in New Orleans, Louisiana, and attended the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA), for high school and studied jazz under the guidance of program directors Clyde Kerr, Jr. and Kent Jordan.
Adjuah received a scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where he majored in professional music with a concentration in film scoring,and graduated in 2004. As a Berklee student, he started Impromp2 Records and released his first recording, Christian Scott (2002). As a student, he was a member of the Berklee Monterey Quartet, recorded as part of the Pat Metheny and Gary Burton-led Art:21 student cooperative quintet, and studied under the direction of Charlie Lewis, Dave Santoro, and Gary Burton.
Adjuah was signed to Concord Music in 2005. That year, he was featured on Nnenna Freelon's Grammy nominated Blueprint of a Lady. His Concord Records debut album Rewind That (2006) received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Jazz Album.
In 2007, he released Anthem and, in 2008, Live at Newport, a CD/DVD set. Of this album, NPR raved "[Adjuah] Ushers In New Era of Jazz.” 2010 saw the release of Yesterday You Said Tomorrow, which received an Edison Award, and the naissance of Adjuah's "Stretch Music" concept. Public radio station WNYC's Soundcheck has described Stretch Music as a fusion of "Trap Music (Southern hiphop, mixed with techno, dub, and dutch house), traditional West African percussion and New Orleanian Afro-Native American styles." According to scholar Stuart Nicholson, Adjuah coined "Stretch Music" because he "wanted to stretch the definition of jazz beyond the prescriptivist definitions of music."
In 2012, Adjuah released the double studio album Christian aTunde Adjuah, for which he was awarded his second Edison Award for Best International Jazz Artist.
Adjuah established his Stretch Music label in 2014. That same year he signed a partnership with Ropeadope Records. The inaugural release was 2015's album Stretch Music.
In 2017, Adjuah released three albums, collectively titled The Centennial Trilogy. The albums' launch commemorated the 100th anniversary of the first Jazz recordings of 1917. The three releases include Ruler Rebel, Diaspora, and The Emancipation Procrastination. The Emancipation Procrastination was nominated for a 2018 Grammy Award in the Best Contemporary Instrumental Album.
Adjuah also received two Grammy nominations for Best Jazz Solo Performance for "Guinnevere" in 2020 and for "Sackodougou" in 2021.
In 2021, Adjuah formed a new group, Chief Adjuah & the Sound Carved from Legend,which played the closing night of New Orleans's Prospect.5 triennial in January 2022.
On June 28, 2023, Adjuah released Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning on Ropeadope Records. It is the first album on which Adjuah does not play the trumpet, instead using instruments of his own design. On the album, Adjuah "connects to a lineage of Black Indian recordings" like "Iko." Offbeat magazine hailed Adjuah's evolving sound, saying that with the record Adjuah "proves himself once again as an insightful and progressive musician forwarding the flames of ancestral cultures."
Born Christian Andre Scott, he began performing under the name Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah in 2012 as a way of reflecting his family's West African and Indigenous lineage. "aTunde" and "Adjuah" are ancient cities in what is today Ghana. Of his name change he has said "I wanted to create something that better reflected my identity and my background. I don't know specifically that my family came from Ghana – they may have come from Senegal or the Congo – but I sure as hell know that I'm not Scottish." In 2023, he had his name legally changed to Xian aTunde Adjuah and performs under Chief Adjuah.
Further information about Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah is found at ChiefAdjuah.com.
Photography credit: Tom Beetz, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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