Talent Crush: Daoud
Archie Shepp once said: “Jazz is the symbol of the triumph of the human spirit, not of its degradation. It is a lily in spite of the swamp.” Born in the brothels of New Orleans and shunted through school of Chicago, New York and Kansas City underworld, jazz as an art form and a way of life still carries the stamp of progressiveness. OK, the new album by French trumpeter Daoud, offers a quiet manifesto of coming to terms with the things that cannot be changed, while exploring the soft absurdity of pretending everything’s fine. We don’t choose our trauma just like we don’t choose our family, but we eventually learn how to grow with it, communicate with it, how to compromise, and how to tame it when it’s acting out. Know the wolves that hunt you. In time, they will be the dogs that bring your slippers. Love them right, and you will feel them kiss you when they come to bite.
KK: When I talked to Stevie Mackey back in the day, he said that whenever someone sings in front of him, he could immediately tell whether that person is an only child or has siblings (he could also tell whether they are youngest child, middle child, or oldest child) and that he could always tell whether they had experienced significant trauma or abuse just by listening to the nuances in the way they deliver the vocals. Sure, it speaks volumes about Stevie’s expertise as a vocal coach, but pain is what many sensitive, creative and highly empathetic people are capable of putting a finger on, especially if they have dealt with trauma themselves. When I heard Dijon for the first time, it really pulled me because of its dynamics and, of course, the trumpet that screamed and weeped so beautifully – the pain in the music shined through despite quite positive and neutral nature of the track. There’s a number of sensitive topics I really want to dive deep into, including your struggle with addiction very early on and how it shaped the course of your life. We all know that addiction is not the primary problem, but rather an attempt to solve it. The real problem is trauma, which is what led you to leaving home at the age of 17 and not returning to your hometown for nearly a decade. Can we backtrack a bit to what your life was like prior to that pivotal decision?
Daoud: I was born and raised in Nancy, the city in the east of France, by the border of Luxembourg. My dad wasn’t around, but since my mom was a music theory teacher at the conservatory, I remember sitting in a classroom and spending hours noodling on the piano while waiting for her to be done for the day. My two sisters and I all went through music education, but I guess I’m the one who stuck with it. There was a piano in the house, which incredibly improves the odds of becoming a musician in the family. When I was six, I started studying trumpet and kept with it until I was about 15, the time I started struggling with addiction. What I didn’t realized at the time was me working through childhood trauma, sexual abuse at the age of eight, by self-medicating. When I was 17, I needed to escape that environment in order for me to fix it. The girl I was dating at the time was studying film, and one night we just both jumped in the car with her dad and left. We went to Bournemouth (UK) for a few months, and then we moved to Brussels, Belgium. By then, I wasn’t playing music at all for a few years already.
KK: But it’s always been a trumpet, right?
D: Yes, and I resumed playing trumpet only at 19.
KK: I’m curious what made you choose a trumpet as the primary instrument. When kids start taking music lessons, they typically go with piano or guitar.
D: As a kid, I was obsessed with the circus, clowns in particular, so I didn’t pick the trumpet out of classical ambition, but for its absurd theatricality. There was this movie by Cecil B. Demille called The Greatest Show on Earth, which was very long and definitely something I should have never been allowed to watch at such an early age, but somehow I did. The movie depicts the life of a traveling circus, and the plot is quite complicated, but there’s a subplot where one of the clowns is revealed to be a doctor who had euthanized his terminally ill wife. Since it was a federal crime, that clown would always wear makeup to avoid getting arrested, which is what ended up happening to him at the cost of saving life of a fellow circus crew member. The idea that you could have two separate yet parallel lives as a performer really resonated with me. Also, many of the clowns I saw as a kid were playing trumpet, so I thought that in order for me to become a clown, I had to learn how to play a trumpet.
KK: Which, by the way, sounds very logical.
D: Super logical, and that’s what I did. Besides trumpet, I’ve attempted to play a few more instruments at various levels of mediocrity, and I’m very thankful I get to still play with them. I’ve always had a very playful relationship with the instruments, which is horrible when it comes to trumpet because it’s not an instrument that you can have a playful relationship with – it’s a workhorse instrument that you have to practice every day to improve the technique, and if you don’t play even for a few days, the level drops immediately, and the recovery from it might take weeks. All this couldn’t be more polar to my personality, which is probably what makes up for a different approach compared to other trumpeters.
KK: Art Farmer once said that there were so many times he would think about smashing his trumpet against the wall, but every time he’d come close to it, he’d stop himself because doing it would mean accepting his defeat.
D: I’ve done that once, actually, and I keep that smashed trumpet on my desk in my studio as a reminder that this is what it can be, but it doesn’t have to be like that. I get Art Farmer’s perspective, but I have no shame in being defeated by the trumpet, and I get defeated by the trumpet all the time. We all do. If you’re sitting at the piano and you press the key, it’s gonna produce the same sound regardless of who’s pressing the key, be it you, Glenn Gould, Bill Evans, or a five-year old – the note is going to come out. The trumpet is the opposite of that: you can play that same note a million times, but just this one time it’s gonna come out wrong. You can be the best trumpeter in the world, yet still crack a note sometimes, so you’ll get defeated no matter what, and all you can do is to do it less frequently or as rarely as possible. It’s a part of the game, and I’m ok with it now.
KK: I think it has to do with it being something very tangible that you physically hold in your hand a lot of the time, so it ends up holding many memories and growing pains. You’re practicing it, you’re taking it to gigs, so inevitably it becomes more than an instrument – it becomes your friend, your sibling, your family member.
D: Yes, and I spend more time with it than I do with my family.
KK: The thing that you said earlier about living two parallel lives as a performer is what makes entertainment industry so attractive. Many of the creatives I’ve interviewed talked about feeling isolated from the environment they grew up in, and that expressing themselves by making art and channeling a different version of themselves would oftentimes become their way to escape the reality. When did you realize what was causing the onset of your addiction? It looks like the nature of that trauma wasn’t revealed until later on.
D: I realized it when I came home at 28. All that time, I’ve been struggling a lot, and I’ve been trying to figure out why I kept putting myself in situations that weren’t serving me, and why I wasn’t able to defend myself in certain scenarios, to be in control. It took me a long time to process something that happened 20 years ago and figuring out what to do with it now when the damage is done – you can’t go back in time and change it, but you can finally forgive yourself and move on. After two decades of complicated life and bad decisions, you can come back to yourself. At the time, I was also questioning other decisions in my life. Even though I’ve been a professional musician for nearly a decade, none if it felt good, right, or fulfilling, so coming home and not playing music for a while allowed me to revisit my relationship with it, process everything, and start fresh. Obviously, it’s a work in progress, and I’m not going to pretend like I’ve fixed myself and it’s all perfect now.
KK: Honestly, I don’t even think we’re supposed to be fixed. Forgiveness is the best thing we can do for ourselves, which includes forgiving the abuser, regardless of how hard it is. Trauma is not something that happens to us, it’s something that happens inside of us. As a result, we keep carrying that trauma with us everywhere we go. It’s not about the event itself and what it did to us, it’s about how it made us feel. On the other hand, it made us who we are, it made us sensitive enough to feel the things other people can’t. I’m sorry it happened to you, and I applaud you for talking so openly about it.
D: It’s important for me to talk about this experience and subsequent addictions, yet taking the heaviness out of it. If it helps one person, it’s still worth it.
KK: Raising awareness is one of the reasons I thought zooming in on this experience was important. I’m sure there are many people out there who had a similar experience in the past, or people going through the same thing at the moment. My hope is that our conversation gives them reassurance that everything can be OK in the end. Could you share what your recovery process look like and if there was a specific event or a tipping point that catalyzed your decision to get clean?
D: I think a lot of addiction recovery is about your ability to change the environment because if you go back to the same environment, you’ll end up doing the same thing.
KK: Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
D: Exactly. Pulling myself out out the environment was the luxury I had that not everyone would have, but the greatest thing that I could’ve done for myself at the time was putting everything I had in a backpack and leaving the country. I don’t know how successful it would’ve been if I had stayed – the people have a way to find you, the situations have a way to find you, with everything pulling you towards the things you think you want. Recovery to me was not being in the environment. What I thought would be a few months ended up being ten years of struggle, fear, discomfort, living on the street, but I’m gonna turn 35 this year – I’m alive, clean, working, and none of that would’ve been possible had I not removed myself entirely from everything I knew and was. As far as the tipping point goes, I never hit the bottom, really. I’ve had plenty of embarrassing and shameful episodes because I never had a limit to how much I could handle, but there was this growing fear inside of me that the odds of you making it shrink every singe day you continue using. All of a sudden, you start remembering stories of people around you not making it and you get paralyzed by this kind of numb silent fear. I’ve been putting myself in dangerous situations and waking up at the hospitals until I realized that it had to stop.
KK: When you were living on the street, what kind of relationship did you have with an instrument? Were you still playing?
D: Only a little bit. After Belgium, I moved to Edinburgh for a few years and I’d occasionally play with local bands until I got hit by a bad bout of depression, which got me kicked out of the band. Once you run out of the couches to sleep on, you just leave your stuff at someone’s place until you figure it out. There was this place in Edinburgh called The Western Bar located at a roundabout where three strip clubs are facing one another (the locals call it Pubic Triangle) where I was able to land a job as a bartender – that’s what got me off the street. One of my duties was announcing the girls coming on stage. I’ve learned so much so early, so by the time I was 25, I felt like a veteran already.
KK: And it all started with that movie about the clown that you should have never watched. See where it got you?
D: Exactly. Luckily, I was able to dodge a bunch of bullets, and in very stylish fashion sometimes.
KK: Jokes aside, there’s always been a close tie between jazz scene and drugs, which I still find fascinating. Yes, jazz history remembers Howard MkGhee and other musicians who had complicated relationships with drugs, but most people have this very idealistic view of the jazz scene as something sophisticated and legit. Not gonna lie, I’m guilty of that too. Growing up in jazz made me see jazz musicians as demigods, especially in the States, and only later when I moved to Chicago and got immersed in the local jazz scene, I realized that they are mere mortals just like everyone else. Historically, that epidemic started with drug dealers approaching musicians during their break between sets and offering them drugs knowing that musicians will be able to pay them with cash at the end of their gig, so it was an easy way for them to make money during after hours. Musicians making up imaginary studio staff members to get extra money to use towards drugs, so-called cocaine budget in the 80s, and many more stories like that. The amount of jazz records produced in the 50s and 60s was enormous, which has to do with multiple factors, including musicians being very incentivized to do more studio gigs to make more money. After finally moving on and being OK with your past, which is what informed the name of your new album, what made you realized that now is the time and place for the world to hear this record?
D: The first record was made in December of 2022, but it wasn’t released until 2024. The label was interested in getting it released, they offered a deal, but I didn’t like the deal, so the first record was ultimately made with no money and no time. As much as I’m proud it as a very loud and unapologetic statement, there were many things I wanted to do on that record that I wasn’t able to because of all these limitations. As soon as the record came out, I already started thinking about the next one, the same way I’m thinking about the next one right now. My label is gonna be mad at me for saying it out loud, but I’m not interested in maximizing the return on the record stretched out over the course of a 2-year-long promo cycle.
KK: And just to explain it to the audience reading this, there’s a specific cycle per a standard music deal where you’re supposed to get most ROI from the record by doing promo events, cross-promotion, touring, commercial partnerships, music collaborations, etc. Maximizing the record’s momentum is what keeps make it relevant to the audience, but not to the artist because you’re forced to live in the past while your creative self lives in the future.
D: Exactly. Of course, a record can take years to come out, so I’m very thankful that it only took a few months for the album to come out. The cycle can be anywhere from 18 months to ten years for major artists like D’Angelo or Frank Ocean, but I don’t want to cater to these expectations and limit productivity for the sake of promotion of the record. By the time album comes out, you’re already a changed person, and you keep changing. Ideas come easy to me – I just need to isolate myself from the familiar environment, get away for a few days, and the music starts pouring out.
KK: The first record is definitely a statement, an introduction of Daoud as a frontman, the leader, in a very direct way. When I listen to the new album, Daoud is not a frontman anymore. Music is the frontman. It’s a very mature step forward music-wise and production-wise. When we’re young, everything we make is very selfish. The new record wasn’t driven by ego, which resulted in it being a very cohesive body of work that I think you should be proud of. On top of being a top-tier material, it’s authentic, it’s honest, inviting, and stylish – both visually and sonically.
D: Thank you. You’re absolutely right. I’ve been a sideman my whole career, no one knew me, I was always in the back, so my first record was my way of breaking out of it. It drew attention, but I really needed to live up to the expectations it created. The musicians I’ve worked with on the first record had a hard time understanding my ideas and where I was going with them because they are traditionally trained jazz musicians, but I really needed musicians who could fill in the gaps musically instead of being told what to play. With the second record, I was very involved every step of the way from recording to mixing, I had an amazing team, an incredible sound engineer Olivier Cussac, and all of them were very open to me being hands on and excited about me being engaged. There was no ego involved in the process of creation, just like you said.
KK: And it absolutely shows in production.
D: It was just so much fun. Everyone had a safe space to play around and be creative, and I’m super grateful it all happened that way.
KK: Speaking of jazz as a genre and the rigidity some musicians approach it with, I’m wondering how you define jazz today. Some people have a very narrow understanding of what it can be, and even jazz musicians have a very specific idea of what it’s supposed to sound like.
D: Especially jazz musicians.
KK: What it does to jazz as a genre is that it makes it even less accessible for broader audiences and especially young people, and it’s coming from a first-hand experience because I always find myself being one of the very few young people at the jazz festivals. We’re talking free jazz festivals featuring award-winning musicians, so money isn’t the reason why young people aren’t in the audience. Bringing young audiences there is a very slow process, even with all the crossovers happening in jazz today. If you had to give a definition of jazz to a 5-year-old, what would it be?
D: To me, jazz is any kind of music where it’s hard to anticipate what’s coming next. There are many elements to it, including improvisation and the fact that not everything is on one musician, but even though I’ve written the song, I don’t know exactly what it’s gonna sound like in the end. Going back to the point you made, many people want to protect jazz as a legacy and culture, which I’m sure stems from a good place, but if you overprotect anything, you’re gonna smother it to death. First off, I don’t think jazz needs any protection – it’s strong enough on its own. It doesn’t need older musicians to tell younger musicians how to play it. By trying to protect the genre, we disconnected it from the audience. When I talk to the owners of jazz venues, the organizers of jazz festivals, they keep saying that every year it gets harder and harder. This is not the audience’s fault – this is our fault. We have failed to get them there by the way we talk about out music, the way we promote it, the way we book the festivals, etc. My audience is very diverse as far as demographics go, and when talk to young people and hear that they’ve never been to a jazz show before until now, I ask them why’s that? Some of them don’t even think they are allowed to, that they are welcome to attend.
KK: But also they don’t even know how diverse and broad the genre is. If we take Mammal Hands as an example, they do technically fall under the category of jazz because their music carries some elements of jazz, but they’ve never considered themselves a jazz trio, and the music they make has a post-rock sensibility, which is what makes it sound unique. What music influence do you see as the foundation of the music you’re creating?
D: To be honest, I actually listen to a very minimal amount of jazz apart from what I hear at the music festivals or the music my friends make. Just like any musician, I have phases. Last year, I had a huge phase with the country music from the 60s and 70s, and a pretty big J-pop phase. What I see consistently piercing through my music is film music and video game music.
KK: Interesting. What is it about video game music that makes it so appealing to you?
D: It appeals to me as an art form, as a medium. Film music is incredibly respected and so are film composers, but if you’re a composer for a video game, no one knows who you are. To me, video game music is the underground of film music. Playing video games as a teenager introduced me to the brilliant music of Nobuo Uematsu, the composer behind the Final Fantasy series. We’re talking PlayStation (PS1) supporting 16-bit audio depth where these real orchestral compositions were played by the most horrendous midi instruments cause that’s the only way you could have music in the video game at the time. Today’s video game music has evolved so much, it’s written by legit composers, and the talent is incredible. As a composer, you’re making music that supports the story and immerses the audience in it, you’re enhancing a non-musical experience with music. Although I don’t play video games anymore, I can see how that level of immersion has evolved over the years. There’s this video game called Outer Wilds that was strongly recommended to me by one of my friends. It’s a very interesting conceptual game with no loading time and insane production, but the music in this game is so mind-blowing that it made me revisit the Final Fantasy music of Nobuo Uematsu, and I’ve been listening to a lot of video game music in addition to film music when working on the record. Not every video game, tv show, or film has great music in it, but when it does, what a treat.
KK: We have world-class musicians writing music for tv now, which was unheard of before, but I think it has to do with the fact that tv has been redefined as an art form, not something frivolous and cheesy, with the budgets allowing to hire talent of that caliber. Trent Reznor’s transition to film and all the things he’s done with Atticus Ross is a good example of a musician finding new mediums for creative expression. Going back to your album, there’s many interesting and playful production choices, and one of my favorites is someone shouting out in Dijon closer at the end of the buildup. Whose voice was it and who made a decision to keep it in the final version?
D: That was me. Both times.
KK: Many people would’ve probably disregarded it, but this shout is what made this track for me because it showed personality and added a character. The melody is pretty simple and straight-forward, and the buildup is steady, it doesn’t deviate much, but this shout brings in the element of surprise. It has the energy of the live music played in the most authentic jazz environment there is, which in front of a real audience. Back in the day, when I listened to Process by Sampha, I was absolutely sure that the drums were supplied by Yussef Dayes, and only later I found out that the drums on that record were programmed. On Lahai, Sampha’s sophomore album, he did have Yussef on the drums, which once again shows that when you have a strong vision for your music, you’ll attract collaborators that will fit into that vision organically. It’s like a sonic manifestation, in a way. The rhythm is the most prominent component on your new record, the glue that holds everything together, and I think it wouldn’t be the same without Silvan Strauss on it. How did you guys connect and what was the recording process like?
D: We both got invited to Norway to produce tracks for a record label, and we stayed in touch after that. When I started working on the record, I thought that it would be cool to have him play drums. Silvan was open to it, but since I knew that we wouldn’t have time to rehearse, I made sure that the drummer who tours with me lays out drum patterns so that Silvan can prepare in advance. He came in well-prepared, he’s extremely professional. However, with someone as creative as Silvan, you’d want to have as much time as possible, so I had to make many decisions ahead of time. Silvan took it to the next level. He’s such a natural drummer, very expressive in his drumming. He likes to marinate a song, he does a lot takes, and my dream would be to give an architect like him more time to build things the way he wants.
KK: There’s three quotes by three famous jazz trumpeters that I chose, and I’m wondering how you’d feel about what they said and if you would agree with them. The first quote is by aforementioned Art Farmer, and it goes like this: “It doesn’t matter who you play for or what you think as long as it sounds good in the end. The technique, the style – it’s all meaningless compared to the final outcome of your efforts, and the ends are more important than the means. I think about a lot of things, not only about the notes, they are not that important. The most important thing in music is rhythm, and after that comes the melody, and after that, the harmony. Music is a selfish thing: although you give, you give it in order to gain satisfaction from giving.”
D: Yes, I agree. Whether it’s selfish or not, it’s a philosophical subject. We all give in order to feel good about ourselves, and, from that standpoint, music can be considered selfish. The notes should be important to music students, but not as important to musicians. Same goes for technique. We first need to convince ourselves that notes are important in order to learn them, but once we do, we need to reprogram ourselves to think otherwise. There’s something I tell musicians a lot: we’re not neurosurgeons or emergency doctors. No one cares. Let’s get over ourselves and not expect people to receive the music in any way. Not internalizing those things is extremely liberating. This is our job. Everyone goes to work, yet we as musicians think so highly of ourselves and that there’s higher purpose to what we do. If your family owns a farm or a shop, someone needs to take care of it. Growing up in a musical family and given the fact that my sister wasn’t interested in becoming a musician, I had to take over the shop. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do, it’s my favorite job to have, but it doesn’t mean it’s more important for me than it is for anyone else.
KK: Up next is Buck Clayton, who said: “First of all, music is a ball. It’s — what do you call it — self-inspiration. If nobody else is going to inspire you, you inspire yourself and you end up just playing. Usually, just blowing my horn, the first note to me is satisfaction. Only at the times that you don't feel good, the trumpet becomes a problem. When you don’t feel good, that trumpet weighs 150 pounds.”
D: It aligns with what we just touched upon. It’s a job, and when it comes to any job, it’s not about motivation – it’s about responsibility. I’ve never had issues with motivation because I know that there are people on my team who are dependent on me financially, and I don’t take this responsibility lightly.
KK: Do you ever feel like your trumpet weighs 150 pounds?
D: Everyday. Unlike Buck Clayton, I don’t have good days.
KK: The last quote is by Arturo Sandoval: “To rise above the crowd, you must discipline yourself increasingly to the strict demand and realities of your ambition.” When it comes to ambition, how do you discipline yourself in order to get where you see yourself going creatively?
D: My ambitions are unlimited, but not at any cost. My number one priority is being able to look at myself in the mirror and get back to work, so respecting myself and people around me is extremely important to me. This is what’s going to determine what you’re willing to do for your ambitions. I’ve realized that if I work hard every day, and in a smart way, there’s almost nothing I can’t achieve. There’s no end goal, and I can stop at any moment. My discipline lies in understanding that there’s only one way forward, which is through work. Even if I work 0.1% every day, I will improve and get closer to my ambition. Arturo had a very disciplined approach to his practice, no wonder he’s one of the greatest to ever play the instrument, but I know for a fact that I don’t possess the same degree of discipline to play the trumpet because I don’t limit myself to just a trumpet player: I see myself as a musician, composer, producer, and if I solely focus on the trumpet, I won’t have time for other things I wanna get better at.
KK: But, also, going vertically in your growth as a trumpet player doesn’t mean producing better music.
D: It most certainly would not.
KK: If would likely put you on a pathway of a highly requested session musician, but it doesn’t mean that it would result in making music that resonates. The only way forward is authenticity, and trauma is something that can get in the way as it makes you disconnected from yourself, and when you’re disconnected from yourself, you can’t be truly authentic. With this new record, it feels like you’ve been able to truly connect with yourself. Whenever people ask me about my definition of success, I give them the same example with the mirror. Just like you, I realize that nothing is off the table for me as long as I’m staying authentic and take care of my health, both mental and physical. It’s just as simple as that. Another important facet to living a truly authentic life is the people you surround yourself with. It’s almost expected that if you’re gaining traction as an artist, you will eventually move to bigger cities. What role does the music community play in your life and what makes Toulouse so special to you as a musician?
D: France is very centralized, and everything evolves around Paris. We complain about it a lot, but we don’t do anything about it. If everyone who want to make it in the industry systematically moves to Paris, we keep feeding into the system that’s gonna reward Paris and we’re gonna uproot musicians from perfectly valid cities, all of which results in starving other cities of culture and infrastructure for younger musicians. Paris is not the place where I’d wanna live: it’s expensive, people are rude, and it rains all the time. Here in Toulouse, I have a house, the weather is nice and sunny, and I have a responsibility towards younger generations of musicians to stay here and build here, and if I do, I’ll represent someone who was able to make it here, and all the politics and infrastructure will start building around us if we stay. If you don’t live in a major city, you don’t have to leave – just tough it up. Every time a talented musician is moving from Toulouse to Paris, I take it as a personal failure because I wasn’t able to build the necessary infrastructure and environment for them to stay. The music scene in Toulouse is freeing itself from trying to be Paris.
KK: Another example that comes to mind is Philly. I remember talking to Rich Spaven after his show with Loyle Carner in Brooklyn, and I when I mentioned that now I share my time between Philly and New York, he said that he has a lot of respect for musicians in Philly because, given their talent, they can be anywhere, yet they deliberately stay in Philly to support the culture and community. The talent in Philly is absolutely insane, and I agree that it can absolutely operate in autonomous mode.
D: Yes, Philly has also freed itself from trying to be New York cause Philly is never gonna be New York, nor does Philly wanna be New York. Chicago doesn’t wanna be New York because Chicago is Chicago, but, for a while, many jazz scenes wanted to be New York. Paris wanted to be New York. Before moving to Toulouse, I had met a few musicians from here, and even though I’ve never been here before, I didn’t hesitate once. The city has an amazing talent, great schools, and the majority of musicians I recorded with on the album are local, besides Silvan and a few guests. The music was made here, mixed here, and it belongs here.
KK: And with someone as determined and passionate about the craft as you are, there’s no doubt the music scene in Toulouse is gonna be OK.