Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah [formerly Christian Scott] is a two-time Edison Award-winning, Doris Duke Award in the Arts winning, six-time Grammy-nominated, sonic architect, multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, and designer of innovative technologies and musical instruments (like the Stretch Music App, Siren, Sirenette, tilted bell Christian Scott models as well as the Adjuah Trumpet and Chief Adjuah’s Bow). He is the founder and CEO of the Stretch Music app company and record label. Adjuah is Chieftain of the Xodokan Nation, of the Maroon tribes of Afro New Orleans, as well as the current Grand Griot of New Orleans. A direct descendant of New Orleans cultural royalty, He is the grandson of Louisiana luminary and legend, the late Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr., Grand Griot of New Orleans and Guardians Institute founder Herreast Harrison, the nephew of jazz innovator NEA Jazz Master saxophonist-composer, Big Chief Donald Harrison, Jr. Chief Adjuah’s identical twin brother, Kiel Adrian Scott, is an award-winning writer and director, and Spike Lee protege, known for his acclaimed short films and for directing Peabody Award–winning and NAACP Image Award–winning television series. Together, the brothers share a creative mission to elevate cross-cultural storytelling and innovation across music, film, and culture. Since 2002, Adjuah has released fourteen critically acclaimed studio recordings, four live albums, and one greatest hits collection. He is widely recognized as the progenitor of “Stretch Music,”. A 21st-century approach that asserts genre blindness and an ethnomusicological approach to limitless fusion that heralded NPR to hail him as “Ushering in a new era of Jazz" with JazzTimes Magazine marking him as "Jazz's young style God”, “the architect of a commercially viable fusion” and both I-ROCK-JAZZ and AllAboutJazz.com citing him as the “The LeBron James of Jazz”. He has collaborated with Prince, Mos Def (Yasin Bey), Talib Kweli, Thom Yorke, McCoy Tyner, Marcus Miller, Flea, Eddie Palmieri, Robert Glasper, as well as heralded poet and musician Saul Williams. His innovations have garnered him a PBS American Masters, JAZZFM's Innovator of the Year Award, Jazz Journalist Association Trumpeter of the Year, The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, The Paul Ackett Award, The Echo: Deutscher Musikpreis, The Changing Worlds Peace Maker Award, a host of Downbeat Magazine’s Critics and Readers Poll's wins for Best Composer, Best Trumpeter and Best Electric/Jazz-Rock/Contemporary Group. Induction into the inaugural constituency of the Black Genius Brain Trust, an honor he shares with his Peabody, and NAACP Image award-winning identical twin brother writer-director Kiel Adrian Scott. Recently Adjuah played himself in the hit films Bill and Ted Face the Music and Issa Rae’s The Photograph as well as becoming the face of the first ever BMW XM.

Sun Ra founded the Sun Ra Arkestra in Chicago in the mid-1950’s. Sun Ra was among the earliest pioneers of the synthesizer and the free jazz revolution of 1960’s. Sun Ra sent a strong spiritual and musical message to his Arkestra wanting them to help make the universe better through positive vibrations and music.

The Sun Ra Arkestra are known worldwide for their live shows that combine big-band swing, space-age free jazz, be-bop, singing, dancing, chanting and Afro-pageantry. The Arkestra has been at the forefront of Afro-futurism since their inception.

The Arkestra have recorded more than 100 albums. Their 2020 album “Swirling” was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Big Band Jazz Ensemble recording.

After more than 60 years the band continue to circle the globe on their Inter-Galactic tour. Recent highlights include shows at the Kennedy Center with Solange, The Berlin Opera House, the Burlington Jazz Festival and a New York City show at Radio City Music Hall.

Few bands have travelled this far – cosmically and musically.

“The possible has been tried and failed. Now it’s time to try the impossible.”

Sun Ra Space is the Place!

Music is in multi-instrumentalist and composer Cochemea Gastelum’s blood—he comes from a long line of musicians on both sides of his lineage. For over 25 years, Cochemea has built a distinct career as a soloist, section player, and composer/ arranger, collaborating with artists across genres— from his long tenure with Sharon Jones and the Dap- Kings to work with Kevin Morby, Run The Jewels, Jon Batiste, Amy Winehouse, The Roots, Archie Shepp, Mark Ronson, and Quincy Jones, among many others.

His forthcoming album on Daptone Records, Vol. 3: Ancestros Futuros, is the third volume in a series that includes All My Relations (2019) and Vol. 2: Baca Sewa (2021). Across his body of work, Cochemea interweaves the past, present, and future, engaging with time as speculative history— one that moves fluidly between memory and possibility.

For Vol. 3: Ancestros Futuros, he gathered a core group of longtime collaborators—a powerhouse octet of New York City percussionists and members of Daptone’s famed rhythm section. Gabriel Roth (aka Bosco Mann) returned as producer and mixing engineer, capturing the band live to 8-track analog tape. Accompanied by a 9-minute film mixed in Dolby Atmos, this volume also marks Cochemea’s evolution into visual storytelling.

Cochemea’s previous releases have been praised by DJs and critics alike. His Daptone debut, All My Relations, was a family reunion of sorts, uniting spirits, musicians, and melodies across time and place. Leading a nine-piece ensemble, he recombined ancient elements— drums, winds, and voice—into a deeply personal meditation on the interconnection of all things. Vol. 2: Baca Sewa directed this exploration into the archives of family history, mythology, and the cultural imaginary. Pitchfork called All My Relations “equal parts spiritual journey and irrepressible funk.” Mojo awarded the album four stars, noting “its message of harmony and oneness is universal,” while Downbeat described Vol. 2: Baca Sewa as “radiating like a flower from beginning to end.”

Vol. 3: Ancestros Futuros is anchored in the cultural fabric that has nurtured Cochemea from the beginning. A California native of Yaqui ancestry, Cochemea describes a central part of his work as “accessing ancestral memory that comes in different forms—sometimes when you visit a place, sometimes in dreams... it’s in our DNA. For me, it’s about seeking wholeness in these zones of fracture.”

Dreams play a vital role in his creative process. “A lot of melodies come to me through dreams,” he shares. “I’ve kept a record of them for years, shaping the language into dream scores as foundations for compositions that connect the conscious and unconscious realm.” One such score appears on the back cover of Ancestros Futuros, reflecting the intuitive and layered nature of his work. This dream- guided approach informs the album’s opening track, Transmisión del Soñar, which serves as a portalbetween dimensions.

The album is also shaped by stories of survival and resistance. The title track, Ancestros Futuros, draws from a story of a Yaqui midwife who would bury the navels of newborns in the ground so that future generations would rise and reclaim the land. “I was thinking about survival as a continuum connecting past and future generations,” Cochemea explains, a theme that echoes throughout his compositions.

Cochemea’s musical and spiritual synthesis is made possible through his reverence for the horn and the music and traditions that precede him. His distinct voice as a saxophonist and flutist places him within a lineage of players who honor the past while blending dexterity with invention. Inspired by heroes like Eddie Harris, Yusef Lateef, Jim Pepper, and Gato Barbieri, he coaxes his instruments into intimate and expressive realms, bridging ancestral rhythmic traditions with forward- looking vision, creating a signature sound that is both deeply rooted and expansive.

Vol. 3: Ancestros Futuros finds Cochemea building worlds of sound, blending past, present, and future into a ritual offering —an evolving sonic fiction carried across space-time, where memory, survival, and imagination converge.

Music is in multi-instrumentalist and composer Cochemea Gastelum’s blood—he comes from a long line of musicians on both sides of his lineage. For over 25 years, Cochemea has built a distinct career as a soloist, section player, and composer/ arranger, collaborating with artists across genres— from his long tenure with Sharon Jones and the Dap- Kings to work with Kevin Morby, Run The Jewels, Jon Batiste, Amy Winehouse, The Roots, Archie Shepp, Mark Ronson, and Quincy Jones, among many others.

His forthcoming album on Daptone Records, Vol. 3: Ancestros Futuros, is the third volume in a series that includes All My Relations (2019) and Vol. 2: Baca Sewa (2021). Across his body of work, Cochemea interweaves the past, present, and future, engaging with time as speculative history— one that moves fluidly between memory and possibility.

For Vol. 3: Ancestros Futuros, he gathered a core group of longtime collaborators—a powerhouse octet of New York City percussionists and members of Daptone’s famed rhythm section. Gabriel Roth (aka Bosco Mann) returned as producer and mixing engineer, capturing the band live to 8-track analog tape. Accompanied by a 9-minute film mixed in Dolby Atmos, this volume also marks Cochemea’s evolution into visual storytelling.

Cochemea’s previous releases have been praised by DJs and critics alike. His Daptone debut, All My Relations, was a family reunion of sorts, uniting spirits, musicians, and melodies across time and place. Leading a nine-piece ensemble, he recombined ancient elements— drums, winds, and voice—into a deeply personal meditation on the interconnection of all things. Vol. 2: Baca Sewa directed this exploration into the archives of family history, mythology, and the cultural imaginary. Pitchfork called All My Relations “equal parts spiritual journey and irrepressible funk.” Mojo awarded the album four stars, noting “its message of harmony and oneness is universal,” while Downbeat described Vol. 2: Baca Sewa as “radiating like a flower from beginning to end.”

Vol. 3: Ancestros Futuros is anchored in the cultural fabric that has nurtured Cochemea from the beginning. A California native of Yaqui ancestry, Cochemea describes a central part of his work as “accessing ancestral memory that comes in different forms—sometimes when you visit a place, sometimes in dreams... it’s in our DNA. For me, it’s about seeking wholeness in these zones of fracture.”

Dreams play a vital role in his creative process. “A lot of melodies come to me through dreams,” he shares. “I’ve kept a record of them for years, shaping the language into dream scores as foundations for compositions that connect the conscious and unconscious realm.” One such score appears on the back cover of Ancestros Futuros, reflecting the intuitive and layered nature of his work. This dream- guided approach informs the album’s opening track, Transmisión del Soñar, which serves as a portalbetween dimensions.

The album is also shaped by stories of survival and resistance. The title track, Ancestros Futuros, draws from a story of a Yaqui midwife who would bury the navels of newborns in the ground so that future generations would rise and reclaim the land. “I was thinking about survival as a continuum connecting past and future generations,” Cochemea explains, a theme that echoes throughout his compositions.

Cochemea’s musical and spiritual synthesis is made possible through his reverence for the horn and the music and traditions that precede him. His distinct voice as a saxophonist and flutist places him within a lineage of players who honor the past while blending dexterity with invention. Inspired by heroes like Eddie Harris, Yusef Lateef, Jim Pepper, and Gato Barbieri, he coaxes his instruments into intimate and expressive realms, bridging ancestral rhythmic traditions with forward- looking vision, creating a signature sound that is both deeply rooted and expansive.

Vol. 3: Ancestros Futuros finds Cochemea building worlds of sound, blending past, present, and future into a ritual offering —an evolving sonic fiction carried across space-time, where memory, survival, and imagination converge.