Chief Adjuah

Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah [formerly Christian Scott] is a two-time Edison Award-winning, six-time Grammy Award-nominated, Doris Duke Award in the Arts awardee. He is a sonic architect, trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, designer of innovative technologies and musical instruments (including The Stretch Music app, Adjuah Trumpet, Siren, Sirenette, Chief Adjuah’s Bow and Chief Adjuah’s N’Goni). He is also the founder and CEO of the Stretch Music App and Recording Company. Adjuah is the Chieftain and Oba of the Xodokan Nation as well as the current Grand Griot of New Orleans. He is the grandson of Louisiana luminary and legend, the late Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr., Guardians Institute founder and Grand Griot, Herreast Harrison. And is the nephew of Jazz innovator and NEA Jazz Master saxophonist-composer, Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr. Adjuah (and his twin brother Kiel) joined his grandfather’s Guardians of the Flame banner in 1989 at the age of 5.
Since 2001, Adjuah has released thirteen critically acclaimed studio recordings, four live albums, and one greatest hits collection. He is widely recognised as the progenitor of the “Stretch Music” style. A 21st-century approach that asserts genre blindness and an ethnomusicological approach to limitless fusion that heralded NPR to hail him as “Ushering in a new era of Jazz” and JazzTimes Magazine to mark him as “Jazz’s young style God” and “the architect of a commercially viable fusion”. He has collaborated with a number of notable artists, including Prince, Thom Yorke, McCoy Tyner, Marcus Miller, Flea, Eddie Palmieri, Robert Glasper, rappers Mos Def (Yasin Bey), Talib Kweli, as well as heralded poet and musician Saul Williams. Adjuah scores music for his identical twin brother, writer/director and visual artist Kiel Adrian Scott, filmic works. Scott is a Directors Guild of America Award recipient whose works have been honoured with The Peabody Award and an NAACP Image Award.
Recent projects for Adjuah include film and brand partnerships with PBS’ American Masters, “The New Chief,” short film, JAZZFM’s Innovator/Innovation of the Year Award, Jazz Journalist Association Trumpeter of the Year Award, The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, The Paul Ackett Award, Echo: Deutscher Musikpreis, a host of Downbeat Magazine’s Critics and Readers Poll’s wins for Best Composer, Best Trumpet, and Best Electric Jazz-Rock Contemporary Group. Multiple Grammy Nominations for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album, Best Contemporary Jazz Album, and Best Improvised Jazz Solo. In 2017, Adjuah starred in GAP’s Skate Meet Horn campaign. The following year, 2018, saw him leading 1800 Tequila & Billboard Present: The Refined Players. Adjuah made a cameo appearance in Bill and Ted Face the Music, starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, where he plays a member of The Future Council and contributed the music for Louis Armstrong’s character. Adjuah is also featured in film and sound in the romantic drama, The Photograph, starring Issa Rae. He was inducted into the inaugural constituency of the Black Genius Brain Trust, received the Changing Worlds Peacemaker Award, and the Doris Duke Award in the Arts. This year, he became the youngest person and only Chieftain to hold the position of Grand Griot of New Orleans, as well as becoming the face of the First-ever BMW XM, starring in BMW’s #fortheXminded campaign of commercials commemorating the release of the new vehicle for 2023.