Chief Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah Makes His Music With Constant Reevaluation

When speaking with the accomplished musician, Chief Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, it can often feel like you’ve opened an encyclopedia filled with history, culture and artistry. Adjuah, who was born and raised in a region where music was part of its DNA, understands songs almost like recipes. They are passed down for sustenance and from these deeply rooted compositions spring nations. As a musician, Adjuah, who comes from a line of artists and prominent indigenous New Orleans people, carries a nuanced burden. In one respect, he aims to tell the stories that have kept him and his family alive through centuries of hardship and discovery. In another, he pays them homage by reevaluating their nature to potentially re-form or broaden their scope so as to incorporate modern, though equally hard-earned ideas of care and community. Adjuah, whose latest live improvised record, AXIOM, was recently nominated for a Grammy, brings this in-depth understanding of musical reconstruction to each trumpeted phrase he plays.   

“If Doc Cheatham was to come back today,” Adjuah says, “he would be honored to hear you’re playing his music. But he’s going to want to hear what the fuck is going on now, too. Not just you pantomiming him.”

Adjuah’s in-depth musical education began before most enroll in kindergarten. His grandfather would often hold court in an historic section of New Orleans where former slaves were once allowed to celebrate or even sell goods to potentially earn their freedom. Adjuah’s grandfather, a chieftain of four separate tribes of Black Indians in Louisiana (unprecedented at the time, Adjuah says), introduced his grandson to music during his practice in the square.

“That was ground zero,” Adjuah says. “A space where enslaved Africans were allowed to hold onto their rhythms, where musical culture was imperative. Where they could sell their wares and dance and do different things. Some people procured their freedom from the things they sold there. For Black New Orleanians, that’s hallowed ground.” 

Adjuah grew up understanding traditional processionals and the histories of a people who rebelled against the west as newly freed slaves, finding solace with the native Louisiana tribes but often simultaneously requiring American cities for commerce. It’s a sordid story but from these times came creative ways to persevere and music was at the forefront. Adjuah says he first fell in love with the drums and as he grew up, he’d participate in ceremonies where his ear for the instrument aided his role in the neighborhood. Today, as an adult, he’s followed in his grandfather’s footsteps – Adjuah is a chieftain now, too. But he carries that role differently than others have in the past. For generations, these ceremonial traditions had to be “masked” so as not to be suppressed. But today, Adjuah says, he wants to unmask them and make them more prominent.

“I think that’s what’s different about my particular approach as a chieftain,” he says. “Those moments when you really get to see who I am. I’m not hiding behind something or under a veneer. When you see me in my ceremonial regalia, those are more my clothes than the ones I buy at the store!”

For Adjuah, growing up in New Orleans meant that listening to music was more like drinking water than attending a band class. So, when he went on to enroll in the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston and, later, make his way in the New York City jazz scene, he was already deeply familiar with the lineages of the genre. He’d been born and raised on the original stuff written in the mire decades before the turn of the 1900s while so many others thought jazz began roughly in a 1930s bandstand. A former athlete (boxer and baseball player), Adjuah knew what it was like to wrestle in the muck with the music. That’s always been his M.O. His grandfathers and great-grandfathers had historic record collections. He’d studied with and under the greats. With so much music coursing through him, the only way to express himself truly was to lift his horn and point forward.

“I was learning the music from architects or the children of the architects,” Adjuah says. “And they’d all say the same thing, that jazz and the blues are synonymous. The only difference is that jazz is the blues that learns to speak all languages. But at the end of the day, the point is, what are you experiencing and how does that relate to how you’re experiencing it?”

For Adjuah, the idea of constant reevaluation is central. He knows that even if he played a piece perfectly yesterday, he can play it even better today or tomorrow. But one might not think a perfectionist in this way would embrace live recordings. Yet, Adjuah often prefers releasing live albums. In this way, the unique imperfections make the musical moment even more indelible.

“The mistakes are part of what makes it perfect,” Adjuah says.

Even though Adjuah is thought of as a trumpet player, primarily, he is a multi-instrumentalist who, in many ways, comes from the James Brown school of rhythm, meaning every instrument – from trombone to piano to his horn – is, in actuality, a type of drum. Music gets people moving by offering rhythms that resonate in the limbs and hips. It’s not necessarily the brightness of the note that shakes a room. Rather, it’s often the propulsion of the bop. As a result, Adjuah musician is often sailing with his horn on currents of frenetic percussion.

“The root of my entire musical everything,” he says, “is the drum and drum theory.”

While Adjuah has earned accolades and been pronounced by many as a new leader in improvised music, he understands that the group remains key to the sustainability of music and to the importance of its message. In this way, empathy is central to his success both as a band conductor and an imbedded community leader.

“When you meet a person and you’re engaging with them,” Adjuah says, “whether you agree with them or not, you’re always looking in a mirror.”