Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning (Ropeadope)
Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah
Released July 28, 2023
New York Times Best Jazz Albums of 2023
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https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kN0oDUHzCW3UJjQ8K-7Yj0pcbaEamo-68
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About:
What’s in a name? For many of us it is taken for granted – our identity since birth, a direct connection to our heritage. Yet millions among us do not have this privilege; their names were taken and replaced with the names of the colonizers. As we navigate the uncertain waters of the 21st Century, we look to the past to identify, clarify, and narrate the true stories of our evolving culture. For this we need leaders – those who recall and share with us the heritage that has been written off. Music holds a central place in this process, as it cannot be removed from a culture in one generation. And so, we look to those that hold both the understanding and the rhythm of the past to inform our path.
Today we focus on the personal journey of a cultural anthropologist of the musical kind:
Multi-instrumentalist, producer and Chieftain and OBA of the Xodokan Nation of New Orleans, Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah announces the release of his fourteenth studio album and first under his reclaimed name as a distinguished tribal leader. Previously known to many as boundary-breaking jazz auteur Christian Scott, Chief Adjuah continues his legacy as a sonic architect and pioneer on Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning, out July 28, presenting a stupendous body of work that aims to save the rock ‘n roll and blues of tomorrow via the excavation of their storied roots and past in New Orleans, the Diaspora, and West Africa.
In a first offering from the album, Chief has shared standout single “Xodokan Iko – Hu Na Ney,” a familiar melody is re-imagined as a call to the emancipatory energies of the venerated ancestors and self-liberated leaders of the African Diaspora and maroon communities of the Americas. “Xodocan Iko – Hu Na Ney” inspires future leaders to continue to face off and rise against opponents of freedom. It is a revelatory acknowledgment of today’s valiant leaders that also honors those who fought for liberation before the Emancipation Proclamation and Juneteenth.
The culmination of over two decades of trailblazing 21st-century music, BOTROL is a riveting exhibition of genre blindness and a comprehensively sharpened ethnomusicological approach to limitless fusion. Make no mistake, this is not a jazz album but rather Chief Adjuah’s new vision of the future of music and a reflection on the past, centered around storytelling and song. On BOTROL, Chief replaces his trademark trumpet here with a new instrument of his own design—Chief Adjuah’s Bow, an electric double-sided N’goni/Kora/Harp. BOTROL bridges past and future by marrying New Orleans culture and the folklore, ceremonies and rituals of the maroon and Afro-Indigenous chiefdoms with his own innovation: Stretch Music. The result is a spellbinding exhibition of Afro-New Orleanian and West African expression where music, dance, and cultures unite.
“Everything from call and response to thunderous drums, music that lives with us in celebratory, proclamatory, preparatory, joyous, and determined moments of our journeys. It was without measure the amount of healing it did to sing the old songs the old way and the new, the new. The Album is a part of my journey into Chiefdom, the gathering of community, and the inspiration it created and continues to foster. It is another kind of Ancestral Recall. Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning was performed on Chief Adjuah’s Bow, a double-sided harp I created in 2021. It was built to serve as a bridge to the African forefather nations of the blues and its descendants, places like Mali, Senegal, Ghana, Benin, and Nigeria, and Instruments like the Ngoni, Ankoting, and Bolon. But now in a plugged-in, lightning in a VOX and smokin’ pedals kinda way. Each record is sung and sewn with the song and story of the Xodokan Nation, and that of the Nations of my kin, ancestors, and predecessor Chieftain. My Grandfather who led many nations Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr. of the Guardians of the Flame and my uncle NEA Jazz Master Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr. of the Congo Square Nation. It’s that roaring sound of the Maroon Nations of New Orleans. Drums make thunder and boom, tamborines ring through time itself it seems. And other times it feels like it’s hailing a future of Rock n Roll that’s fully connected to all these skeleton keys, threads, and seeds. Each thread unites in possibility. Simultaneously centuries-old and focused forward—a Sankofa’n approach to Rock n Roll, Blues, and yeah Stretch Music.”
Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah
Track Listing:
1. Blood Calls Blood 07:40
2. Trouble That Mornin’ 04:39
3. Xodokan Iko – Hu Na Ney 03:57
4. Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning 15:22
5. Shallow Water [Tribute Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr. – Guardians of the Flame] 06:13
6. On To New Orleans [Runnin’ in 7’s Redux] 03:19
7. End Simulation 03:29
8. Ashé Chief Donald [Tribute Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr. – Congo Square Nation] 02:31
9. Golden Crown [Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah – Xodokan Nation] 03:56
10. Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning [Duo] 05:15
Personnel:
Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah: vocals, Chief Adjuah’s bow, Adjuah’s N’Goni, SPDSX, pan african kit, bells, tambourine, percussion, synth percussion
Trail Chief Kiel Adrian Scott: vocals, percussion (3, 5, 8, 9 )
Weedie Braimah: djembe, congas, tambourine, dun duns, percussion, vocals (3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9)
Luques Curtis: bass, guembri vocals (2, 3, 5,8, 9)
Elé Howell: pan african kit, drums, bells, tambourines, vocals (3, 5, 8, 9, 10)
Brian Richburg Jr.: drums, SPDSX, percussion, tambourines, vocals (1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9)
Marcus Gillmore: drums (3, 5)
Joe Dyson Jr.: pan african kit (6)
Corey Fonville: drums (6 )
Alfred Jordan: drums, percussion, tambourine, vocals (3, 5, 8, 9)
Mizan Willis: dun duns, bells, shekere, percussion*, vocals (3, 5, 9)
Amyna Love: vocals (3, 5, 9)
Amina Scott: vocals (3, 5, 9)
Lioness Sia Fodey: vocals (3, 5, 9)
Produced by Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah
Executive Producers: Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah, Cara Harrison Daniels, and Louis H. Marks
Recorded by Dave Weingarten at The Champagne Room West and Westlake Studios, Los Angeles, CA
and Chris Finney at Trombone Shorty Studios, New Orleans, LA
Mixed by Qmillion at Flyin’ Dread Studios, Los Angeles, CA
Dave Weingarten at The Champagne Room, Los Angeles, CA
Mastered by Paul Blakemore, Cleveland, OH
Creative Direction: Devan Mayfield
Concept Ideation: Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah, Kiel Adrian Scott, Devan Mayfield
Photography: Eric Ryan Anderson
Photo Assistants: Colin Fatke and Landon Edwards
Design: Eric Hurtgen
Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning is dedicated to Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr. of the Guardians of the Flame. and Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr. of the Congo Square Nation.
with Special Thanks to our matriarch Queen Mother Herreast Harrison Guardians Institute founder and Grand Griot of New Orleans, Michele Harrison, Nkem Big Chief Brian Harrison Nelson and Maroon Queen Cherice Harrison Nelson of the Guardians of the Flame, Trail Chief Kiel Adrian Scott and Obahema Cara Harrison Daniels of the Xodokan.
To the ancestors, the true nations of Alkebulan, the peoples of Africa, the First Nations of the Americas, the descendants of Congo Square, the Maroons of the Diaspora, the Guardians of the Flame, Congo Square Nation and the mighty Xodokan.
Review:
It’s fitting, in this moment, that the hardest-hitting album on this list would be a celebration of Indigenous identity, resilience and resistance. For Chief Adjuah (formerly Christian Scott), “Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning” is also his first hard break from jazz, a category he has been trying to slip his entire career. Here he sits with the other tradition that raised him: the “maroon” community of New Orleans’s Black masking Indians, commonly known as Mardi Gras Indians. This is Adjuah’s first LP without any trumpet. Instead he circles up with a group of family and longtime collaborators, revisiting classics from the call-and-response Black Indian repertoire and adding his own, newfangled rallying cries over plucked kora strings and charging drums.
Giovanni Russonello (The New York Times)
