Arnaud Dolmen quartet

He was the man of the year in 2022 for French jazz, which finally recognised him for what he is: one of the most gifted drummers of his generation. Arnaud Dolmen, with his fiery Adjusting quartet, conceived during confinement and whose music questions our interconnectedness, our human experience in a world as beautiful as it is noisy. His highly contemporary jazz drumming resonates with the ancestral rhythms of the ka drum, learned when he was a child.

There's something profound going on in the French West Indies when it comes to jazz, and Arnaud Dolmen is one of its most remarkable expressions. Seen with saxophonist Jacques Schwarz-Bart, flutist Naissam Jalal and singer David Linx, this drummer belongs to a generation of musicians in their thirties who, like their Caribbean cousins from Cuba and Puerto Rico, are seeking to reconcile a centuries-old rhythmic culture with the language of the most contemporary jazz. It's not surprising that you think of Dafnis Prieto or Miguel Zenon when you listen to his music: it's all part of the same drive to activate traditional rhythmic cells at the very heart of the liveliest jazz, to engage with its roots without lapsing into folklorism, avoiding exotic clichés at all costs.