In Waves

Description

That Samy Thiébault chooses to take to the sea will surprise no one. He, who has matured his vision of jazz through the lens of Creoleness, which he fully embraced in Caribbean Stories, has simply stayed the course: exactly under the tropics, where the islands blend into the horizon. Setting sail or more precisely ‘going to the ocean’, offering oneself in a gesture both carnal and mystical, tasting the power of nature, finding in the heart of the wave what quenches his thirst for surrender. - - Samy Thiébault has the ocean deeply ingrained in him. He has surfed it under all latitudes and in all its colors. He loves it as a catalyst for inspiration, an infinite space he feels viscerally. He returns to it constantly, whenever his life as a jazzman allows. Among the admirers of John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders (whom he honors on this record), Samy Thiébault is a unique case. He does not have a school sound—European or American—but a lyricism he embraces in phrases with astonishing contours, finding other paths, here on the road to the Indies, there in the Caribbean arc. Musically and philosophically, he says, ‘nothing happens without otherness’. It is his personal quest, his taste for adventure, his Song from afar. - - Samy Thiébault's otherness also comes from being born in Côte d'Ivoire, growing up in France on the Atlantic coast, and counting among his anchors the Morocco of his mother, who already animated the repertoire of Rebirth. It is also about rediscovering himself as a surfer during a tour in Bali in 2016. ‘When I entered the wave,’ he confides, ‘it felt like a rush, it became necessary.’ Whether he realized it or not, the seeds of In Waves were there: finding the harmony between his musical conception and the practice of surfing, meeting the water peoples in Guadeloupe, Fiji, and the South Pacific; making a record that would be a return to the sea. This idea, Thiébault would let germinate much later: he was then working on Caribbean Stories, Symphonic Tales, and Awé!. - - ‘It's the first time I've taken so long to release a project,’ admits Samy. If, upon listening, In Waves forms a remarkable whole, one cannot imagine that the tenor literally crossed the Seven Seas and recorded in about ten different locations around the globe, in Cayenne, Suva, Vientiane, Jakarta, or Manila. A puzzle assembled over more than a year like an initiatory journey between euphoria, air pockets, questioning, bold turns, and unexpected encounters. It’s Samy Thiébault the adventurer-surfer in the style of William Finnegan or Erwan Simon, opening his mic to the khên player from Laos (this traditional mouth organ heard in Theuykhong), to François Ladrezeau, keeper of the Ka of Guadeloupe launching his powerful vibrato (In Waves), or even to the Fijian children who sing while pounding kava, this ancestral drink made from roots.