Jean-Pierre Smadja, known professionally as Smadj, was born in Tunisia and raised in Paris, where his early musical influences spanned Oriental, Brazilian, funk, soul, and folk traditions. His passion for the guitar led him to enroll in a jazz school at the age of 15, where he developed a distinctive approach to reimagining traditional jazz through eclectic, boundary-crossing sounds. This curiosity about the craft of music naturally extended into formal study, and he went on to earn a degree in sound engineering — a qualification that opened the door to a successful career working alongside prominent classical and folk artists in the studio.

Smadj released his debut album in 1994, but it was Equilibriste that brought him widespread international recognition, praised for its seamless fusion of acoustic and electronic elements and reaching number four on the European World Music Charts. In 2002, he partnered with fellow oud virtuoso Mehdi Haddab to form DuOuD, a duo dedicated to reimagining the oud for contemporary audiences.

His collaborative work continued to expand over the following years. In 2003, he joined master percussionist Burhan Öçal as part of Burhan Öçal and The Trakya All Stars, and by 2005 he had taken on the role of artistic director for Öçal's New Dream, a project centered on the reinterpretation of Romani musical traditions. Alongside these collaborations, Smadj pursued his own recordings with Turkish musicians Savas Zurnaci and Orhan Osman, as well as projects such as Sakat with Yemeni artist Abdulatif Yagoub and Ping Kong with DuOud.

Further projects included the solo work Selin, featuring guest appearances by Erik Truffaz and Talvin Singh; a film soundtrack for Muro co-composed with Cem Yildiz; a significant body of work with the band Hü, rooted in Alevi traditional music; and a large-scale commissioned project, The Oud After Smadj, featuring Natacha Atlas, Ibrahim Maalouf, Mehdi Haddab, and Cem Yildiz, created for the Saint Denis Festival in France.

In 2012, Smadj released Fuck the DJ, a genre-blending record drawing on disco, dubstep, and Oriental influences, which gained considerable attention. This was followed in 2015 by Spleen, a work that reflected a more introspective side of his artistry.

His two most recent releases are Solotronic and Dual. Solotronic was built around an extensive solo touring cycle, presenting an oud recital that moved fluidly between acoustic performance and electric oud with electronic production — a deliberate exercise in performing alone on stage. Dual, by contrast, emerged in dialogue with others: shaped in part by the disruptions of the pandemic period, it draws on the contrasting and complementary perspectives of collaborators Sylvain Barou and Denis Guivarc'h, with that interplay becoming central to the album's character.