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He was only 5 years old when he first joined the Guardians of the Flame Mardi Gras Indians banner led by his grandfather, Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr. It’s hard to exaggerate how deeply Adjuah is enmeshed in the cultural life of New Orleans. The Crescent City connection is where Adjuah’s Stretch Music concept starts. Louis and maintains deep roots in New Orleans. He’s brilliant at breaking it down for me and sharing a lot of information.”Ī master of the djembe (a skin-covered goblet drum) who’s performed around the Bay Area this year with vocal star Cécile McLorin Salvant, Braimah was born in Ghana, raised in East St. My idol is Youssou N’Dour from Senegal, so I’ve really connected with Weedie. I grew up hearing a lot of West African music.

He was serious about his message and said ‘Call me if you keep on playing.’ So I did.”įor Howell, Adjuah’s Stretch Music “fit perfectly with the progression of sound I was experiencing. He gave my parents his number and every time he came back to the Bay Area he’d check in. “But Christian was super cool, just cracking jokes with me and he let me sit in with the band. “I’d run around and bug everybody,” he recalled. The son of Bay Area tenor sax master Richard Howell, Elé first encountered Adjuah as a 6-year-old who was spending so much time at Yoshi’s that he knew the door codes to get back stage.

“I’m just floored at what he’s been able to put together, the languages of drumming he’s developed,” said Adjuah, 40. They’ve stayed in close contact over the years, and Adjuah started featuring Howell at his Stretch Music Festivals after the drummer moved to New York to study at Manhattan School of Music in 2016. The award-winning trumpeter, composer and bandleader who started his career as Christian Scott is back in the Bay Area with a band powered by 24-year-old Elé Howell, the latest step in a relationship that started when the drummer was in the first grade. As the scion of an illustrious clan at the center of Black New Orleans culture, Chief Adjuah knows first-hand that it’s never too early to start passing on the tradition.