Artist Talk with Chief Adjuah: Stretch Music, Heritage, & Preservation

Join BU Arts Initiative for a special talk with Jazz artist, Chief Adjuah! Before his live performance at WBUR CitySpace, Chief Adjuah will engage in a moderated talk about his musical journey, the role of heritage and upbringing in his work, and how he navigates the music industry beyond conventional labels. This discussion offers a unique opportunity to learn more about his background and approach to music. Professor of Music André de Quadros will moderate the talk and there will be time for a Q&A at the end.

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, and 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 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.

André de Quadros, music educator, conductor, ethnomusicologist, writer, and human rights activist has conducted and undertaken research in over forty countries. His professional work has taken him to the most diverse settings, spanning professional ensembles, and projects with prisons, peacebuilding and reconciliation, psychosocial rehabilitation, refugees and asylum-seekers, poverty locations, and victims of torture and trauma. For nearly a decade, André de Quadros has worked in Massachusetts prisons, jails, and detention centers with a focus on empowering people in incarcerated settings to tell their stories through improvised music, song-creation, poetry, movement, and theater. The approach co-created by him is called Empowering Song.

When 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm on 27 February 2025
Building 808 Commonwealth Ave.
Room Room 205