Part of an Artist’s Job and Chief Xian aTude Adjuah Interview

Part of an Artist’s Job

There are always areas of vast silence in any culture, and part of an artist’s job is to go into those areas and come back from the silence with something to say.

--Ursula K. Le Guin

Chief Xian aTude Adjuah Interview

Following are excerpts from an interview between Finn Cohen and Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah, born Christian Scott, in the May 2026 edition of The Sun magazine. Chief Adjuah comes from a New Orleans lineage of one of many Native American tribes composed of a racial mix of freed African slaves and Indigenous Americans that originated in the Southeast US and still exist there, in other areas of the US, the Caribbean, and the Americas. His tribe and many others go back to early colonial times and still remain in the New Orleans area. They are commonly referred to as “Maroons”, “Black Masking Indians”, “Black Indians”, or the pejorative term, “Mardi Gras Indians”. He is an accomplished performing and recording artist well-known in American jazz circles. He attended the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts during his high school years and then went to and graduated from the Berklee College of Music in Boston on a full scholarship. He prefers the term “stretch music” for what he plays instead of “jazz” because of the vastness beyond the boundaries of definition that he is reaching for. While at the same time, it can be genuinely personal.

The interviewer, Finn Cohen, is a senior editor at The Sun, and has a college music degree that included participation in an Afro-Cuban percussion ensemble.

The reader may rightly ask, what does this have to do with Torah-Veda? My answer is that Torah-Veda is an avenue of spiritual expression that seems right for me, whereby I am “stretching” spirituality gleaned from given traditions in which I have made an “investment”, as the Chief puts it, in a similar manner to which the Chief is “stretching” jazz. For me, music and spirituality are intimately interconnected, and much of what I have excerpted here resonates on a level of wisdom that transcends a mere discussion about music and cultural heritage.

Q: There’s a tradition of Scandinavian jazz – I mean, there’s jazz all over Europe. Do you feel there’s a dissonance in someone performing music that comes from a different cultural history?

A: Those are not the same threads. I would hope that those musicians have made the investment in where the sound is coming from. But the point is that everybody has the ability to contribute beautiful things. I don’t expect somebody from Denmark to play the blues like someone from Tupelo, Mississippi. That’s a regional sound. And this music is about you being your sincere self. It’s always been weird to me, this idea that whoever’s on guitar needs to be able to play that line like Charlie Christian. You certainly need to be curious enough to be able to apply these different techniques and approaches, but once it’s time for you to speak your song, you don’t have to play like Charlie Christian. That’s ridiculous. Charlie Christian already played. We have recordings; we can hear him. You’re certainly not doing him any favors by messing up his lines, right? Just do your thing.

Q: I was in the Afro-Cuban percussion ensemble at Duke as part of my music degree. The instructor was a guy from Harlem who had been taught by Chief Bey. He taught me how to play guanguanco.  And he hated drum circles, because he felt like it was disrespectful to the music. He didn’t think it was OK to just hop in and beat on something.

A: I disagree. That space is designed for that. A drum circle is not the same as, like, an initiated circle, a cadre of folks in New Orleans, or Cuba, or Salvador. That’s different. You have initiated spaces where master-level practitioners work on what they work on, right? That’s not the same as a drum circle, which is a free-for-all, open for people to share vibration together and learn. It’s like a pickup game.

Q: I think my instructor’s feeling was that he was raised in this practice, and it was sacred. If you treat it this way, that’s disrespectful to its history. So I’m not asking, “Can you play like Charlie Christian?” but more, if you’re living in Denmark, “What do you know about this particular experience?”

A: It might not be your experience, but there are still synergies. I think we spend too much time trying to figure our what divides us, rather than what connects us. There is someone in Denmark right now that has the blues. That’s not up for debate. Someone is suffering. So now I’m supposed to create a metric by which to judge this person’s way of trying to express that? I’m sure people look at our way, and it might seem like we’re carving things up by definition, but actually it’s the opposite of that. For us, it’s more about understanding that everyone’s perspective is valid, but we also have to respect each other. It’s not difficult. We make it more difficult by not listening to each other. Someone in Denmark has the blues. What are they supposed to do with the blues? Eat it? We have coping mechanisms. The music is a tool.

My point is that if you’re interested in it and you want to learn how to effectively communicate with the tools and the vernacular that existed before you, then you make the investment. But the investment also doesn’t have to be made. We don’t have an unlimited time here on earth. I think it’s silly that we try and browbeat people with our priorities. Go ahead and do your thing, as long as you’re not disrespecting people. If you want to approach the blues from a space where you’re incorporating some Scandinavian scales and rhythms, then more power to you. I can’t wait to hear that. Maybe we can do better together if we actually look out for each other.

You don’t know what people are going through. If Scandinavians are non-violently expressing themselves, that’s even better, because historically there’s been some pretty rough shit going on in these countries. It’s better than somebody raping and pillaging because they don’t have an outlet. If a guy wants to sing the blues, man, but all means, please sing the blues. If you want to do it like Muddy Waters, then at least go to Mississippi and spend some time on the farms, so that your composite is stronger. But it’s not something that you have to do to touch those things.

Q: Well, we often hear the phrase “cultural appropriation” in these conversations. A white rapper would probably be the easiest example – someone borrowing part of a culture that they may not have come from. I’m not saying it’s always bad, because it’s case by case. The context of things matters.

A: Look, when I see Eminem in a cipher, I don’t see any deficit. I see someone that made the investment. It’s different when you’re pantomiming and the audience can hear you didn’t do any of the work. You’re just copying something. But you don’t want to go thirty-two bars toe-to-toe with Eminem! Where do we draw the line, right? It is a case-by-case thing. Be curious, take the time to actually make the investment, and a lot of those conversations go away.

I think when our community has reservations about these things, it’s usually because, as soon as we invent or come up with something, another culture almost immediately has to find a corollary to it. Little Richard said the reason we had all of those popular records from Jerry Lee Lewis was because there was not going to be a poster of Little Richard on the wall in a white American home. We understand the history of it, right? Given that context, yeah, it’s a little fucked up. I would imagine that our group would also kind of be like, “Yo, well, if you’re going to steal shit then we should at least be able to say you stealing some shit.” I think that’s fair. 

But in the interest of moving forward, I think if you want to touch things that come from other cultural groups, just go and be a part of the group and make the investment. Like you said about your teacher who taught you about guanguanco: If you go to Puerto Rico or Cuba, it don’t matter what you look like. If you go and you hang out with the people long enough, and get in and drink with them and be with them, they’re going to show you the moves, and you’ll become part of the larger family. These communities are not closed. Historically a lot of them didn’t have the ability to close themselves off, if we’re being 100 percent honest about it. The conversation we’re having today is about the investment. If you don’t make the investment, and you want to say that you’re revolutionizing guanguanco music, then the masters of guanguanco get to say that’s bullshit, right? But if you do make the investment, they’re going to say, “Yeah, we know him. He’s with us all the time. He’s a bad motherfucker.” I didn’t see Miles Davis kicking Bill Evans out of the band. He was with them. Dave Liebman: with them. John Scofield: with them. No one’s saying John Scofield’s not a master. He’s a master. You’re going to label him outside of that tradition because he’s white? That’s ridiculous. If Miles Davis could hear the shit, then I don’t want to hear what someone else that’s not a master has to say about it.

If you go to a place that has a history, respect the history. Be curious. Be openhearted and open-minded and less willing to accept those narratives that portray certain groups as being nemeses when reality shows that’s clearly not the case.

Those stories and those narratives, those songs, which are histories – we still have them.