Chief Adjuah is a two-time Edison Award winning and Grammy Award nominated trumpeter, composer and producer. He is the nephew of jazz innovator and legendary sax man, Donald Harrison, Jr. His musical tutelage began under the direction of his uncle at the age of thirteen. Since 2002, Chief Adjuah has released eleven critically acclaimed studio recordings, two live albums and one greatest hits collection. Chief 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.” Chief Adjuah is 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 as many other musical forms, languages and cultures as possible. Jazz is a progressive musical movement and Chief Adjuah is at the forefront of its continued viability as an art form. Chief Adjuah is a scion of New Orleans’ first family of art and culture, the Harrisons, and the grandson of legendary Big Chief, Donald Harrison Sr., who lead four nations in the City’s masking tradition. The HBO series, Treme, borrowed the name “Guardians of the Flame” from African-American cultural group Scott began “masking” as a member of with his grandfather in 1989. Chief Adjuah recently became the Chief of The Brave, in February 2017, one his grandfather’s early banners. In 2018, Tulane University’s acclaimed Amistad Research Center announced its archive of the Donald Harrison, Sr. legacy papers to highlight the Harrison/Scott/Nelson family’s contributions to the arts, activism, and African diaspora cultural expressions. The Harrison family’s story has been documented by Oscar winning director, the late Jonathan Demme, in his post-Hurricane Katrina works. Chief Adjuah currently sits on the Boards of Guardians Institute and The NOCCA Institute. Since Chief Adjuah’s emergence on the jazz music scene, he has been a passionate and vocal proponent of human rights and an unflinching critic of injustices throughout the world.
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