Beginning 100 years after the first jazz recording, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah announced The Centennial Trilogy : three full length albums that reflect deeply on the history of Jazz. In his words, Christian was ‘trying to create a document that fully acculturated all of the things that grew from the first century of jazz…. To force all of those things into one context as a means of creating a newer, larger context for artists to be able to grow from’

The scope of the trilogy is not limited to the music; Christian is using broad strokes to present his vision of the world. Growing up in the upper ninth ward he witnessed people enduring the same challenges regardless of their race or ethic background. Undereducated to serve the tourist culture, facing food insecurity and viewing each other as different because of the lens of race. He understood that race was and is a social construct, and saw that people could be working together to build and move forward.

Christian’s use of the term Stretch Music, which is an album title as well as the name of his newly formed record label, goes well beyond the music. It springs from his childhood realization that music can be a tool to obliterate this notion – that by creating music that blends genres he can inspire people to blend in every way. If one visualizes musicians of different genres, it is easy to see how music has been disseminated to us as hyper racialized, a by product of cultural expression. The goal of the artist is, in every way and every calculated move, driven by this understanding and a desire to create a space that advances the notion that we all belong together. It is never I, it is always WE.