Badji – Thurgot Théodat, 2006

Saxophonist Thurgot Théodat has long sailed between France and his native Haiti. He studied in Paris – where he caught the music bug – then returned to Port-Au-Prince, before settling in Toulouse and moving back and forth between the two shores of the ocean. He formed several groups before settling on Badji in the early 2000s. The first album came out in 2006, with contributions from bass prodigy Marck-Richard Mirand, drummer Sega Seck (whom he met in Sud de France), the late Claude Py (an inspired guitarist), percussionist Claude Saturne (later part of Jacques Schwarz-Bart’s Voodoo Jazz Trio), Loubens Bien-Aimé, Jean Mary Louissaint, Lesly Denard and Nickel Jasmin. Thurgot Théodat offers a particularly successful blend of jazz and voodoo music, immersed in the tradition of Haitian rara, but not disdaining detours towards calypso or bossa nova. In 2007, he presented Badji at the Pointe-à-Pitre Jazz Festival in Guadeloupe. At the same time, Thurgot became director of the National Arts School (ENARTS) in Port-au-Prince, where he teaches. A miracle victim of the 2010 earthquake, he lived for several weeks in his car, his saxophone in the boot. And it wasn’t until 2017 that he regained the strength to produce Badji’s next opus.