Besides the trumpet, there are a few other instruments that I have created. The most recent one is called the Adjuah Bow or Chief Adjuahs Bow. Unlike the Adjuah Trumpet, however, the Adjuah Bow has a completely different intention, why it was built. It wasn’t about me, trying to find the perfect sound by hybridizing multiple instruments. It was actually really more about me, trying to figure out how to hybridize instruments that came from the original canon of where the Blues were seeded, by creating a 21st century conduit and corollary to those instruments, that helped younger people tap into their own ancestral memory and recall in terms of their ability to be able to play the instrument. So, with the Bow, I had to find the types of instruments that existed in the early Blues and the early Maroon communities and to see and excavate what specific instruments had the largest history. And what I found was, that there were many corollaries. The main and most fascinating one that I found was an instrument that is called the Ngoni – a West African string instrument made of wood or calabash. This particular instrument was and still is played by the hunters and many different tribal spaces in Mali. The other instrument that was important for incorporate, because of the types of things, I wanted to do with the Adjuah Bow, is called the Kora. Also, a West African instrument with typically 21 strings, that combines features of the lute and the harp. What I realized was, that when I take these instruments into spaces, that had young children in them, the way that they related to them, was amazing. And how quickly they were able to put together rhythms, was staggering. What I also realized in this process, was that the roots of the Blues, which is really the truth of all the music that grew in the 20th century, comes directly out of the harmonic fervour and movement and these kinds of instruments and that kind of music. I can hear in this moment, in creative improvised music, in Rock ‘n’ Roll music and these sorts of spaces, that the Blues is going away. To me that was a tragic thing. So, I wanted to try to create an instrument, that tied to the root of where that music comes from. To re-energize the Blues elements of the modern music, that we hear today. So, I started to work with multiple designers, trying to build a 21st century version of those three instruments and combine their sound in one beautiful instrument, the golden Adjuah Bow.
And that’s where I see the connection between my creations and the BMW XM. To move something like the ultimate driving machine forward, it requires some rigorous excavation and evaluating what has happened in the past. Looking at what the benefit of changing some of the elements will be to future generations. When I took a first look at the BMW XM, I instantly got the feeling that the entire car was built in a re-evaluative moment. This is great.