This week’s edition of 15 Minute Live Performances (watch our previous 15 Minute Live Performances from rising stars UPSAHL and KANDLE) features New Orleans-based collective Cha Wa. Fronted by Joseph Boudreaux Jr., a lifelong member of the city’s Mardi Gras Indian community, the group also features members of Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs and Second Line brass bands. This group of Black New Orleanians pay respect to Native American tribes with their wardrobe, music and dialect. Boudreaux’s father, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, was deeply entrenched in the Mardi Gras Indians, which in turn introduced Boudreaux Jr. to the New Orleans cultural phenomenon at a very young age.
If you’re not familiar beyond that, you should be. Since the group formed in 2014, they’ve been nominated for Best Regional Roots Album at the 2018 Grammys. Their diverse and rollicking sound puts brass band, jazz, R&B, hip hop, rock, soul and African-inspired music in a blender — and the result is unsurprisingly great. Earlier this year, the group released their latest studio effort, My People.
Don’t believe us? Well, we won’t spoil the surprise, just watch the set below and you’ll see why their sound is so exciting.
So sit back, relax and enjoy this 15-minute live performance from Cha Wa.
