Jordan McLean

Jordan McLean is a charter member and lead trumpeter of Antibalas, the Brooklyn Afrobeat orchestra he joined shortly after its founding in 1998. A composer and arranger as well as a player, he served as associate music director of FELA!, the Tony Award winning Broadway musical built around the life of Fela Kuti, which also carried several of his own compositions. In 2016 he formed ARMO with Antibalas singer Amayo and percussionist Marcus Farrar, a smaller group that folds avant-garde jazz into Afrobeat and released a self-titled EP in 2018 on System Dialing Records, the label McLean co-founded. He launched JMMR, or Jordan McLean's Musical Resistance, in 2019 as an outlet for electronics-driven composition, and its debut album Resistance Is Fertile appeared on Nublu Records in 2025. Working professionally since 1995 and based in New York City, he has recorded and performed with figures as far apart as Ornette Coleman, Public Enemy and David Byrne.