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Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah wears more gold than your favorite rappers do, and his latest releases feature enough acoustic drum kits, 808s, and samples mixed with distorted flute solos to make Gucci Mane or Metro Boomin jealous. But Scott isn't making the kind of music his surface-level aesthetic might suggest—rather, he's a jazz trumpet player, bandleader, and self-proclaimed "sonic architect" who just played two back-to-back sold out shows at Carnegie Hall (his first time ever headlining the historic venue).
Thirty-four years old and raised in New Orleans, Scott also designs his own trumpet/horn hybrid instruments, has his own label imprint, and releases all of his new music via his own app, which allows users to manipulate all aspects of his music, from the instruments being played to the tempo. In his small amount of spare time, he supports a non-profit music center in his home of New Orleans with funding, instruments, and classes.
But the most remarkable thing about Christian Scott remains his music. Touring since he was in his teens (his uncle is prolific saxophone player Donald Harrison Jr.), he has toured with Thom Yorke and even spent time with Prince when the late legend was putting together a jazz supergroup. And his new Centennial Trilogy, a set of three albums of "stretch music" (Christian's advancement beyond the contemporary bounds of jazz music) to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first jazz recordings? He'd been planning those since he was a kid, too.
I sat down with Christian a few days after his sold-out shows on a rare afternoon off. We discussed the state of jazz today, his personal style, and his plans for 2017 and beyond.
How does it feel to have just played two back-to-back sold out shows at Carnegie Hall?
Christian Scott: You know, I've been on the road for almost twenty years, and since I was really small, I've always wanted to play Carnegie Hall. So that moment was sort of a dream come true. What was strangest about it was that leading up to it, I had gone maybe close to 40, 45 hours without any sleep. I didn't really realize I was in it until I was in the middle of a solo on the first song, and I was just like, Oh, this is actually happening. It's sort of a strange moment, but to have the opportunity to present the new sounds, in a venue like that. [Carnegie Hall is] known traditionally as being sort of the place where the premiere players and practitioners and cultures of music go to premiere the highest level of established forms, not necessarily the highest level of new forms. I think this performance is kind of a marker of that sound finally really being here.
On Ruler Rebel and Diaspora, you credit yourself as a "sonic architect," which is the coolest credit I've seen on anyone's record. Where does that term come from?
It's something that I learned when I was on the road with Thom Yorke. I played with his Atoms for Peace band. These are incredible players. Even Flea actually kind of shocked the shit out of me because he could play the trumpet at a really high level.
What I learned in that environment really changed how I approach music. Obviously in creative improvised music, stretch music, jazz music, we covet developing the ability to compose instantaneously. But in other cultures of music, a lot of their preoccupations lie with their ability to create environments, so it's less about their vernacular and more about the context that what they are saying is in. So for me, the sonic architectural aspect of my music really comes from me grabbing these things from alt rock and that culture.
It's super ambitious to do three records in a year. Plus you did the Carnegie Hall shows, so it's a big year for you. The music you were just talking about brings analog and digital sounds together in a totally new way. Have you been plotting on doing this all for a while, or was in recently inspired by this momentous anniversary?
No, I plotted on it. When I'm a little boy growing up in New Orleans in the Ninth ward, I lived in a neighborhood that had the first desegregated school in the country. William Frantz Elementary School was across the street from my house. So obviously being a neighborhood that has the first desegregated school in the country means that the neighborhood was a white neighborhood and then eventually blacks started to encroach into the neighborhood and then the neighborhood became mixed.
By the time I'm a small kid—I want to say maybe I'm ten years old—we'll say the neighborhood is 60/40. Living in this environment, I saw a lot of issues that I didn't think needed to exist and didn't make sense to me. So as an example, when I was a little boy, I would see black families that would have children that would be undereducated so they could be in labor class. I was also seeing white families that had kids that were being undereducated so they could be in labor class.
They never really got to the space where they essentially realized they were the same people. Insofar as it is a social construct, race exists. But there is only one race. There is no Homo Sapien Africanus. And as a young person, I wanted to try to figure out a way to address that. This is why I really got the fervor for music. Because in New Orleans, the only space where you can get people to stop fighting historically was when a brass band was doing what it was doing and music was being played in a space. So I decided as a very young person that I wanted to try to address this problem nonviolently through art. I was maybe twelve years old.
So what it is that we do with stretch music is essentially going about the business of addressing that. Part of what we don't realize as a public is that the way that music is disseminated to us historically is hyper-racialized. One of the first major record labels that ever existed that disseminated the gramophone to the world was called Race Records. Race music is a style of music. It happened after jazz and Dixieland music and blues music, and it preceded rhythm and blues. So literally, the arc goes like: blues, jazz music, race music, rhythm and blues music—R&B, rock and roll.
So my idea is if I can create a form of music or a mode of operating in music that can take away the tenets of genre by melding them with other cultures, then essentially what am I doing to the music? If I can mix all of those seemingly disparate cultures of music and confine them into one space and marry them all, then what am I saying about the people? I'm saying that the people belong together.
So the Centennial Trilogy is our way of doing that, that also addresses part of what needs to be addressed in jazz. I knew that the centennial mark was going to come up when I was a little kid. My teachers would always say that when the hundred-year mark happens you guys will be men. You'll be adults.
This is something you've been thinking about for a long time.
Since I was a child. Well also partly because the first jazz record is satire. The original Dixieland jass band, J-A-S-S, stands for "jack-ass music." It was them looking at what blacks' contribution was and basically essentially making fun of that. And for that reason, when I was a little boy, you said "jazz" in front of the wrong elder and you might get the taste slapped out of your mouth. They did not like that word. And obviously that's something that weighed on me because to me what could be more beautiful than creating a moment like that? This music, it's a freedom music. Malcolm X said the only place a black man could be free in America was on the jazz bandstand. That should tell you a lot about how free these people really are.
So you're reclaiming that musical history.
Yeah. I think something we don't think about is most people have accepted this notion and this idea that the best jazz has already existed.
I mean you go to iTunes and you look at the artists that are in there, and it's all dead people.
Don't get me wrong. I love Miles and Trane and Duke Ellington and all these guys, and certainly it's a beautiful thing for people to reinvest in that history. But it's essentially like, you know, like you look at sports. You look at someone like Steph Curry, right? Trust me, Steph Curry is not afraid to check Bob Cousy. The position, the mode of operating has updated itself. Why? Steph Curry had the ability to study Bob Cousy, you get what I'm saying?
I think people who do anything at a high level want it to get better. They wouldn't do what they're doing if they didn't. So when you look at me and you think about my musical trajectory, but in your mind's eye you're thinking for some reason my contribution is dwarfed in comparison to Dizzy Gillespie's or Charlie Parker's or Miles Davis', or any of these people—obviously I have extreme reverence for these people, and as a practitioner of this music. I know how difficult it was, and how outrageously fucking gorgeous and riveting what they did was. But I don't think for a second that what they did should dwarf the contributions of this generation's practitioners.
On that note of music then and especially contemporary music, I want to talk to you about hip-hop. What's your favorite rap song out right now?
I like "Bad and Boujee," man. You put that "Mask Off" on, it's going down. The last fifteen days I've been on four continents, so I'm always on the plane listening to stuff. A lot of times when I'm listening, I'm just trying to get hyped in my space. We might be playing in Abu Dhabi, and I know when I get out there playing, they're going to vibe me because I'm dressed in all this gold, and they might think I'm a damn drug dealer because my passport is five times thicker than anybody else! So when I'm in that moment, I'm listening to trap music, the shit from my hood, you know what I'm saying? Obviously I love Kendrick. I just got the new Kendrick album. I think he's destroying shit right now.
It's truly crazy.
Right? And what's great is I have a lot of friends who write with him, work with him. Obviously Terence Martin is the homie. Stephen Bruner, Thundercat, you know. These are people I love. Like I'd jump in front of the train for these dudes. Most of us have been friends for fifteen, twenty years.
But just to jump back to that, I'm on to trap music. When I hear "Bad and Boujee," come on, or what's the young boys, "Black Beatles"? It's funny, I will follow that up by listening to Sir Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor.
I definitely want to talk real quick about the Stretch music app because that is something that is also something that on paper, you see a musician who's putting their music out to be totally re-edited and re-listened to and recut. That kind of sounds crazy on paper, but I know you're really dedicated to this young generation, people learning from what you're doing.
So Stretch Music is the first interactive media player of its kind for creative improvised music. It allows the listener or the practicer to customize their practicing or listening experience through the manipulation of the stems of the tracks. As an example, if you play trumpet and you want to learn how to play my music without me there, you can play any of my songs. You just press the mute button, and I'm out of there. Which is my favorite way to listen, by the way.
Let's talk about your personal style—the chains, these clothes—because when someone thinks jazz musician, they're not going to imagine gold chains and Jordans.
So I'm born and raised in black Indian culture, or Afro-Native American culture. My neighborhood is essentially that, New Orleans. My granddad is the only guy to be a chief of four different tribes of black Indians. But those guys, they wear a lot of gold. A lot of them are affirming that they're West African. Because if you go and look at pictures of Akan rulers, you will see them dressed in gold to the nines. If you look at pictures of Obas from Benin, they're just dressed to the nines in gold.
So that's part of it. For me, a lot of it is also me being clear about what my identity politics are. A lot of times—like I said, we travel all the time. You go all over the world and people are looking at you funny a lot of times if you're moving in a larger group of six-foot black guys. The thing is, though, if what you see in terms of my fashion, you don't recognize any of it, it creates a question. That question is all I need. Because the question will maybe stop you from concluding a lot. The question may say, "I've never seen a necklace that looks like that. I wonder where that is from. I wonder where he's from." So questions lead to more questions.
So part of the way my fashion is designed in the way it is is because—even in my music, I'm preoccupied with creating new questions. I think questions are the key. Obviously when a human being wants to learn something, the tactic they employ is a question. If we're trying to figure out or learn how to get along better and create a future where are kids aren't fighting and WWIII hasn't happened and motherfuckers aren't running around attacking each other with sticks and stones, then a lot of that is going to have to happen with the right questions. So this is why my fashion is designed that way. If I can create a question then maybe you'll take a step back and maybe start to try to see some of my humanity.
Grooming by Sacha Harford/Ray Brown Represents
Ruler Rebel is available now
Diaspora is available for pre-order and will be released on 6/23
The Emancipation Procrastination, the third and final record in the Centennial Trilogy, will be released on 9/15