daoud

An enfant terrible who rejects the codes of jazz, daoud imagines music driven by a sense of inadequacy, shaking up frameworks without seeking to please, appealing just as much to curious novices as to purists.

The whole is run through by a constant tension: between playfulness and gravity, chaos and softness, irony and sincerity. With ok, his new album released on ACT in 2025, he delivers a personal manifesto tinged with failure and repetition—yet also with the selflessness required to start over once again.

All around the music, the artist builds a raw visual universe, marked as much by provocation as by youthful letting go, a return to childhood not for comfort, but to unearth contradictions. Fragility, impermanence, satire—the aesthetic embraces flaws rather than hiding them.

On stage, daoud and his band play with the rules, balancing restrained lyricism with explosion. They string together sold-out shows and acclaimed appearances, from Ronnie Scott’s in London to the Montreux Jazz Festival and the North Sea Jazz Festival. At the same time, daoud composes and produces for others, never losing hold of an increasingly free and uncompromising personal vision.