Adjuah was born on March 31, 1983, inNew Orleans, Louisiana,[16] to Cara Harrison and Clinton Scott III. He has an identical twin brother, writer-director Kiel Adrian Scott. He began studying jazz with his uncle, jazz altosaxophonistDonald Harrison Jr, when he was 12.[17] He attended theNew Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) for high school and studied jazz under the guidance of program directors Clyde Kerr, Jr. and Kent Jordan.[17] Adjuah appeared on Harrison Jr.’s albumsParadise Found andKind of New after joining his uncle's quintet at age 16.[18] He graduated from NOCCA in 2001.[19]
Adjuah received a scholarship to attendBerklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where he majored in professional music with a concentration in film scoring and graduated in 2004.[20] 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 thePat Metheny and Gary Burton-led Art:21 student cooperative quintet,[20] and studied under the direction of Charlie Lewis, Dave Santoro, andGary Burton.[17][21]
2010 saw the release ofYesterday You Said Tomorrow, which received an Edison Award, and the naissance of Adjuah's "Stretch Music" concept.[8] Public radio stationWNYC'sSoundcheck 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."[28] According to scholar Stuart Nicholson, Adjuah coined "Stretch Music" because he "wanted to stretch the definition of jazz beyond the prescriptivist definitions of music."[29]
In 2012, Adjuah released the double studio albumChristian aTunde Adjuah. Reviewer John Fordham called it a "tour de force" and a "courageous and ambitious experiment."[33] The album garnered Adjuah his second Edison Award for Best International Jazz Artist.[34]
2014–2020:Stretch Music, the Centennial Trilogy, R+R=NOW, andAxiom
Adjuah established his Stretch Music label in 2014. That same year he signed a partnership withRopeadope Records. The inaugural release was 2015's albumStretch Music.[35]
In 2019 Adjuah releasedAncestral Recall which received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album.[42]
His next album,Axiom, was released in 2020 and was recorded live over five nights at the famedBlue Note Jazz Club in March 2020, just before New York City’s live venues were closed due to the coronavirus.[43]Axiom received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album.[42]
Adjuah also received two Grammy nominations for Best Jazz Solo Performance for "Guinnevere" in 2020 and for "Sackodougou" in 2021.[42]
2021–2023: Chief Adjuah & the Sound Carved from Legend and the Doris Duke Award
In 2021, Adjuah formed a new group, Chief Adjuah & the Sound Carved from Legend,[44] which played the closing night of New Orleans'sProspect.5 triennial in January 2022.[45]
In 2022 Adjuah was the face of the BMW XM advertising campaign.[46]
On June 28, 2023, Adjuah releasedBark 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.[48] On the album, Adjuah "connects to a lineage of Black Indian recordings" like "Iko."[48] 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."[49]
Adjuah has designed a series of modified brass instruments produced and sold byAdams Musical Instruments.[50] He toldInterview in 2017 that his innovations are due in part to disliking the sound of the instrument: "Part of the reason why I create my own line of trumpets and all these different types of B-flat instruments is because I fucking hate the sound of the trumpet. It’s terrible!"[35] His tilted-bell trumpet often garners comparisons to those played byDizzy Gillespie, which featured bells bent upward at a 45-degree angle.[51] Adjuah's is tilted upward at a 22-degree angle.[52][53] The Reverse Flugel, which Adams markets as the Adjuah Trumpet, is an "invertedflugelhorn with shepherd’s crooks"[54] that is able to sound notes in a higher register.[55]He has also developed the Siren (a trumpet-cornet hybrid), and a smaller version dubbed the Sirenette.[52]
He also developed a double-sided electricharp, which he calls an "Adjuah bow."[56] It combines the features of two traditional West African instruments, theNgoni and theKora.[55] The bow was manufactured to Adjuah's specifications byBob Grawi.[citation needed]
Adjuah married jazz vocalist Isadora Mendez in 2013.[57] They have since divorced.[citation needed]Adjuah is the grandson of Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr. and the nephew of jazz saxophonist-composer, NEA Jazz Master Big ChiefDonald Harrison, Jr.
Adjuah's family lineage comes from theMaroon culture andMardi Gras Indian tradition of New Orleans (Adjuah has said that he considers "Mardi Gras Indian" a pejorative term and prefers "Afro New Orleanian or Black Indian."[58]). His maternal grandfather, Donald Harrison Sr., who began masking in 1949,[59] led three Mardi Gras Indian tribes[60] before founding and leading the Guardians of the Flame in 1988.[61]His maternal uncleDonald Harrison Jr. is Big Chief of the Congo Square Nation Afro-New Orleans Cultural Group.[59] Adjuah began participating in his Grandfather's Guardians of the flame in 1988 with his twin brother Kiel Adrian Scott as "spy boy" and "flag boy" respectively.[62] He joined his uncle's Congo Square Nation in 1999 as "gang spy".[63][64][65]Today, Adjuah is Chieftain of Xodokan Nation of maroons.[43] In 2023, Adjuah was named Grand Griot of New Orleans at the Maafa Commemoration hosted by the Ashe Cultural Arts Center,[15][66] a position previously held by his maternal grandmother Guardians Institute founder Herreast Harrison.[67][68][69]
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.[28] "aTunde" and "Adjuah" are ancient cities in what is today Ghana.[70] 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."[71][72] In 2023, he had his name legally changed to Xian aTunde Adjuah and performs under Chief Adjuah.[73]
^U.S. Office of Geography (1867).Ghana; Official Standard Names Gazetter. Washington, D.C.: Office of Geography, U.S. Dept of the Interior. pp. 14, 58. RetrievedJuly 12, 2023.
Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah onBandcamp