Live on KUVO: Makaya McCraven on YouTube

Makaya McCraven is a prolific drummer, composer, and producer. An artist who has been aptly called a “cultural synthesizer,” McCraven has a unique gift for collapsing space, destroying borders and blending past, present, and future into poly-textural arrangements of post-genre, jazz-rooted 21st century folk music. Profiled in Vice, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and NPR, among other publications, he and the music he makes today are at the very vanguard of progressive music. According to the New York Times, “McCraven has quietly become one of the best arguments for jazz’s vitality.”

Born in Paris in the autumn of 1983 to Hungarian singer and flutist Ágnes Zsigmondi and African-American expat jazz drummer Stephen McCraven, Makaya was raised in a vibrant, creative community in the Northampton, Massachusetts area, where his father often played with artists like saxophonist and ethnomusicologist Marion Brown, multi-instrumentalist Yusef Lateef, and saxophonist Archie Shepp. That scene, with its enticing blend of cultures, helped establish his philosophy around jazz as folk music. Meanwhile, his mother’s music blended Eastern European folk traditions, concurrently shaping his conceptions about the role of music in building and reflecting communities.

His newest album, “Off the Record” (XL Recordings, 2025) is a compilation of his four most recent EPs. His visit to Dazzle last October marked his second appearance at the venerable jazz club. During that trip to Denver, he and the band also dropped by KUVO Studios to record a quick session.