A Conversation on Afro-Indigeneity with Chief Adjuah

As part of the BU D&I Learn More Series and the BU Arts Initiative Artist Residency, join us for an engaging conversation on the intersection of Blackness and Indigeneity with Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah, an influential voice in Afro-Indigenous identity. This discussion, moderated by Associate Professor of Music and Chair of Musicology & Ethnomusicology Department, Michael Birenbaum Quintero, will explore the cultural, historical, and contemporary connections between these two communities. The discussion will be followed by a brief Q&A session with the audience. Lunch will be provided for in-person attendees to enjoy during the talk.

Co-sponsored by BU Arts Initiative and BU Diversity & Inclusion, this event offers an opportunity to deepen understanding of Afro-Indigeneity in a welcoming space. Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah is in residence with the BU Arts Initiative from February 27 to March 1. To learn more about other free residency events with the BU Arts Initiative, visit bu.edu/arts/residencies.

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.

Michael Birenbaum Quintero studies Black cultural politics in Latin America. His work in Colombia examines the place of music in both the Afro-Colombian social movement and the cultural policy of the state under neoliberal multiculturalism; historical constructions of Blackness through music; sounded cosmology; vernacular Black music circulation and technology; violence and trauma; the affective politics of loudness and the genealogy of the Afro-Colombian intellectual tradition. More recently he has turned to examining ritual soundscapes in Havana, New York City, and Ọ̀yọ̀ (Nigeria). He is looking at the place of Afro-Cuban religious drumming in New York City in forging politically salient Afrocentric self-identifications and intra-diasporic interactions between New York Puerto Ricans, African-Americans, Afro-Cubans, and Africans. He has also published on music streaming algorithms and the effect of late capitalism.