Name: daoud
Nationality: French
Occupation: Trumpet player, composer, improviser
Current release: daoud's new album ok is out via ACT. It features a wide range of collaborators, including Silvan Strauss, corto.alto, Ludivine Issambourg, and Rosie Frater-Taylor.
Recommendations for Toulouse, France: Le Taquin. Best jazz club in the world.

[Read our Silvan Strauss interview]
[Read our corto.alto interview]
[Read our Ludivine Issambourg interview]
[Read our Rosie Frater-Taylor interview]

If you enjoyed this daoud interview and would like to stay up to date with his music and current lives dates, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, and Facebook.
 


What were some of the musical experiences which planted a seed for your interest in jazz?

Seeing Ahmad Jamal live at my hometown’s jazz festival. I remember the interactions on stage and the joy in that concert.

What does the term jazz mean today, would you say?

I have no idea.

As of today, what kind of materials, ideas, and technologies are particularly stimulating for you?

There are so many new tools to make music being developed every day but understanding synthesis and synthesizers has been a big thing for me the last few years.

Where do most of your inspirations to create come from – rather from internal  impulses or external ones? Which current social / political / ecological or other developments make you feel like you need to respond as an artist?

I don’t really respond to current events as an artist directly.

I respond as a human being and this human being subsequently makes music through the everchanging prism of his beliefs.

What role do electronic tools and instruments play for your creative process?

They're essential. We spent days developing the right sounds for all the synths on the album with Kuz.

Some patches on tracks like “dijon” ended being very complex creations. Analog synths are all over the album.

Thanks to technological advances, collaboration has become a lot easier. What have been some of the most fruitful collaborations for you recently and what approaches to and modes of collaboration currently seem best to you?

We were able to have 7 guests from all over the world on this last record. Mehdi Nassouli from Morocco, Julien Fillion from Canada but also Rosie Frater Taylor and corto.alto from Scotland.

Most musicians now have a way to record music from their studio with incredible quality and it allowed us to have these incredibly talented musicians on the album which would have been impossible 10-15 years ago.

Jazz has always had an interesting relationship between honouring its roots and exploring the unknown. What does the balance between these two poles look like in your music?

I think we honour the roots and history of music by pushing it forward in all the ways that we can.

I don’t feel like another museum curator that keeps re-appropriating the same vocabulary and methods. We try to see how far we can take this history with us.

How much potential for something “new” is there still in jazz? What could this “new” look like?

I don’t think there’s a way for anyone to answer that question without running the risk of looking very foolish a few years from now. So I’ll abstain.

But whatever it is, I’m excited.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to improvisation?

I’m trying to stay centred and I keep fighting the urge of overdoing it or getting carried away.

Trying to stay calm and focusing on sound. Playing lee with more intent.

The Montreux Festival intends to preserve its archive of recordings for future generations. Do you personally feels it's important that everything should remain available forever - or is there something to be said for letting beautiful moments pass and linger in the memories of those that experienced them?

I’ve always been a fan of the temporary nature of improvisation, live music, street art, dancing.

I think we flatter ourselves by thinking that we can keep anything forever. Everything eventually disappears (yes, the Montreux Archive, too).