Doudou Gouirand (born Gérard Gouirand) is a French alto and soprano saxophonist and composer, born in Nice on April 28, 1940. His records are billed under the nickname Doudou, and Discogs files about thirty entries under that name, most of them other leaders' records. He turned 86 in April 2026, and no death notice has turned up in any source consulted. Both English and French Wikipedia place his music at the meeting point of jazz, improvised music and the traditions of the Mediterranean, with Provence, Corsica and Italy named as roots.

English Wikipedia and a JazzCDs biography say he was living in Sweden when he met Don Cherry, who took him to study and work in Scandinavia and then across Europe. Through Cherry he came to know the South African bassist Johnny Dyani, the Turkish percussionist Okay Temiz, Trilok Gurtu, Bobo Stenson and Palle Danielsson. The earliest record credit found is from that circle: he plays soprano and alto saxophone and light percussion in Cherry's New Researches, with Naná Vasconcelos, Christer Bothén and Moki Cherry, on a live set from the Chateauvallon jazz festival in 1972 that Blank Forms Editions issued on vinyl as Organic Music Theatre in 2021.

According to the JazzCDs biography he came back to France in the late 1970s. He recorded in February 1979 with Temiz's group Oriental Wind (Zikir, on which he plays alto and soprano and wrote the piece "Egee") and wrote one track, "Pluie d'été", for the Brazilian duo Teca & Ricardo's 1978 album Desafio de Viola. His own records began on the JAM label: Islands (recorded in March 1981 in Avignon, with Michel Benita on bass and the South African pianist Chris McGregor on three tracks) and Mouvements Naturels (1982), with Benita again, Dyani, the Danish guitarist Pierre Dørge and the drummers Jean-Claude Montredon and Merzak Mouthana. Gouirand also appears on Dyani's Grand Mother's Teaching (1982), alongside the drummer Makaya Ntshoko, and on two of Dørge's New Jungle Orchestra albums for SteepleChase, Brikama (March 1984) and Even the Moon Is Dancing (July 1985). His group of the period, the World Music Company, is documented on Chanting & Dancing, recorded live at the Zürich jazz festival on October 30, 1983 and issued in 1985.

Forgotten Tales (recorded in Paris in May 1985, on Vent du Sud) added Cherry as a guest on one piece, with Antonello Salis on piano and accordion and the guitarist Gérard Pansanel. Space (February 1986, Montpellier) is a trio record with the pianist Mal Waldron and the trumpeter Michel Marre. La Nuit de Wounded Knee (recorded in Montpellier in June 1989, issued by Blue Line in 1990) pairs him with Stenson, Danielsson and Aldo Romano, and the live Le Matin d'un Fauve (Petit Faucheux, Tours, December 10 and 11, 1993) reunites him with Waldron and Marre. Nino Rota... Fellini (1995, Deux Z), co-led with Pansanel as Orchestra Improvista, arranges Rota's film music for a band with Salis, Marre, the trombonist Yves Robert and the tuba player Michel Godard. English Wikipedia adds that from 1996 to 1998 he toured France and Switzerland in a trio called Third Dimension with Waldron and the singer Jeanne Lee, which made no recordings.

Passages (recorded in June 1998, issued in 1999) has Rita Marcotulli on piano, Jean-Jacques Avenel on bass, Joël Allouche on drums, with Kevin Davy on trumpet and Elise Caron singing on some tracks. Les Racines du Ciel (Indigo Song) (Plume, 2002) brings in kora, ngoni and Peul flute players and singers alongside Baptiste Trotignon on piano and Fender Rhodes. He then co-led the quartet Aumja with the sitar player Brigitte Menon (Mythologies, 2005 on Discogs), and Boleros was recorded in Santiago de Cuba. A Midi Libre preview dated October 8, 2019, for a Nîmes Métropole jazz festival date lists him on alto saxophone in the Art Deco Quintet with Marre, Pansanel, the drummer Denis Fournier and the bassist Jacques Bernard, all players who had worked with Cherry. All About Jazz says he began singing after 2015: Voices for Peace (December 2021), made with the pianist Jean-Sébastien Simonoviez and Allouche, is a set of standards and three originals on which, according to Jazzwise, he sings rather than plays, and Open Songs (2022) is a collaboration with Pansanel.

His playing and writing come out of Don Cherry's open approach to jazz, in which Ornette Coleman's ideas and Indian, African and other world music sat beside one another. La Nuit de Wounded Knee includes his variations on an Ornette Coleman theme and a tune titled "One for Don", and Discogs files Mouvements Naturels under avant-garde jazz and free improvisation and La Nuit de Wounded Knee under post-bop. The other strand is Mediterranean: English and French Wikipedia credit his Provençal, Corsican and Italian roots, and Nino Rota... Fellini and Boleros are the clearest examples. He has repeatedly built records around other musical traditions, with African musicians on Les Racines du Ciel, sitar on the Aumja album and Cuban musicians on Boleros. No interview in which he names his own influences was found beyond the Cherry relationship, so this section sticks to what the records and biographies show. Jazzwise's 2022 review of Voices for Peace praised the trio's rapport and the fragile elegance of his voice.