Chief Adjuah

Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah (formerly Christian Scott) is a sonic architect, trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, and designer of innovative technologies and musical instruments. Adjuah is 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. and Guardians Institute founder and Grand Griot Herreast Harrison.

Adjuah has released 13 critically acclaimed studio recordings, four live albums, and one greatest hits collection, and has received two Edison Awards, six Grammy Award nominations, and a Doris Duke Artist Award. He is widely recognized as the progenitor of the “stretch music” style, a 21st-century approach that asserts genre blindness and an ethnomusicological approach to limitless fusion of genres. He has collaborated with such notable artists as Prince, Thom Yorke, McCoy Tyner, Marcus Miller, Flea, Eddie Palmieri, Robert Glasper, Mos Def (Yasiin Bey), Talib Kweli, as well as heralded poet and musician Saul Williams.

Adjuah is dedicated to several causes that positively impact communities and actively supports numerous community service organizations. He has worked with Guardians Institute in New Orleans’s Ninth Ward, which is dedicated to reading and fiscal literacy, cultural retention, and a firm commitment to the participation of community elders and artists in uplifting youths in underserved areas of New Orleans. Adjuah also currently sits on the board of the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) Foundation. Since Adjuah’s emergence, he has been a passionate and vocal proponent of human rights and an unflinching critic of injustices throughout the world.