Chief Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah (born March 31, 1983, in New Orleans, Louisiana) is a two-time Edison Award winning and five-time Grammy Award nominated sonic architect, multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, designer of innovative technologies and musical instruments, Stretch Music record label and app company founder, and crowned Chieftain of the Xodokan Nation of the Black Tribes of New Orleans. He is the grandson of legendary Big Chief, Donald Harrison Sr., and the nephew of jazz innovator and legendary sax man, Big Chief Donald Harrison, Jr. His musical tutelage began under the direction of his uncle at the age of thirteen. After graduating from the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) in 2001, Adjuah received a full tuition scholarship to Berklee College of Music where he earned a degree in Professional Music and Film Scoring thirty months later.
Since 2002, Adjuah has released thirteen critically acclaimed studio recordings, three live albums and one greatest hits collection. According to NPR, Adjuah “ushers in new era of jazz". He has been heralded by JazzTimes Magazine as "Jazz's young style God" & “The architect of a commercially viable fusion.” Adjuah is 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 and harmonic conventions to encompass multiple musical forms, languages and cultures.
The 2015 release of the recording Stretch Music marked the partnership between Adjuah’s Stretch Music record label and Ropeadope Records. Critics and fans alike have praised the recording. 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 their practicing, listening and learning experience by customizing the player to fit their specific needs and goals.
In 2017, Adjuah released three 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.