When a complete archive of 36 years of exile history is repatriated to the Steve Biko Centre in King Williams Town and Gompo Art Centre in East London, a ground-breaking journey begins for a new generation of artists.

Supported by the ECDC, Hessen Ministry, Protestant Church, Germany Embassy, the journey from Jazz Against to Apartheid to Jazz for Rural Advancement is a worldwide co-operation fitting to the national theme of Unity or uBuntu described in a word as Imvuselelo – The Revival.

Filmed over a series of 4 years of Live Music and Cultural Exchanges at the Steve Biko and Gompo Art Centre, Imvuselelo provides a multi-media archive of dialogue session live music and education. Released as a series of micro-films, many stories are told of an Eastern Cape legacy of jazz excellence, previously unknown.

At the heart of this multi-generation momentum moving story is Johnny imbizo Dyani. Born and bred in Gompo Village, a poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of East London, the unsung hero carried the musical message of liberation as far as Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and the USA.

The restorations and repatriation of cultural memory of his story through exhibitions, interviews, archives gathered through an extensive live recording project in 2022 – 2023 is the foundation for one of the greatest stories yet to be told from the Eastern Cape.

Written by experienced jazz writer and music educator Struan Douglas, the Micro-film is a first in a long series of Eastern Cape “Jazz Movies” still to be made. Part one of this re-awakening of Eastern Cape Jazz Legacy is Johnny Mbizo Dyani Homecoming Tour 2022 – 2023.

Through the audio-visual documentation of skills transfer or Nachwuchsförderung, the eclectic compositions of Johnny Dyani are revived, learnt and performed. These are the same compositions that carried the flame of South Africa’s liberation worldwide through his ground breaking album Song for Biko and the movement he inspired, Jazz Against Apartheid.

The story traces his career through his formative years were as an acapella singer, a pianist, bassist at home in Duncan Village (1945 – 1962). Revelling in the vocal groups of Duncan Village, the journey passes through the young giants of Eastern Cape Jazz (Feza, Pukwana), a bass mentorship with the Jazz Wizards and a baptism into free jazz with the legends of Port Elisabeth, Cape Town and Dorkay House, before as a 17-year-old joined South Africa’s first mixed band – the Blue Notes and heading overseas never to return.

The story traces the emotion of dislocation of suppression. Dyani carried the soil of his home with him both in his pocket and in his musical compositions. The international jazz movement and breakaway collaborations of the South African musicians transformed musical expression into the free-jazz movement in Europe.

Dyani became the foremost composer and collaborator on the European jazz scene. But as the head of the ANC cultural wing in exile and out of the various anti-aparhied movements including Artists Against Apartheid in Sweden he founded the Jazz Against Apartheid movement in 1986.

With the support of fellow musicians, unsung heroes living and late the micro-film project is an episode in the long-standing commitment to continuing Dyanis work and growing the link between Eastern Cape Jazz and the movement to progressive European musicians.

An Afribeat.com initiative

Dyani’s compositions show the merging of folk music and jazz music. He took the functionality of folk music and combined it with the freedom of jazz, to build a community abroad that fought the struggle against Apartheid and won. His compositions bridged music and society, and his harmonic approach had the effect of bringing solidarity and change to the social disharmony. It is a timeless approach. Dyani’s wife Magdalena confirmed his deep sense of African music: “He loved African folksongs religious music and church choirs. He sang in Xhosa, chanted and danced on stage. He was aiming to develop a creative interest beyond tribal stereotypes.”

Dyani performed this music throughout the seventies and eighties with a diverse group of musicians from South Africa, America, Turkey, North Africa, Caribbean, UK, Sweden and France. Through far reaching musical collaborations in exile, he was a forerunner of unity through diversity, or uBuntu as we have come to know it in South Africa.

As he said, “I’ve had interracial bands because I believe in the unity of the universe.”

And as a result his music crossed over into multiple genres: “I am a folk musician,” said Dyani, “and I don’t like to see my work described as jazz because it introduces connotations that I don’t regard as relevant.”

"I did it for my country, for my people," Johnny Dyani

Dyani’s vocal conception of bass playing began as a young child growing up in Duncan Village. His first instrument was the voice and he was a terrific singer. He then moved to piano and began singing and playing at an early age with another resident of Duncan Village Tete Mbambisa. By the age of Twelve, Dyani took up bass and played in Dick Khoza’s group, Jazz Wizards, with Mongezi Feza, Dudu Pukwana, Pinise Saul, Pat Matshikiza and Aubrey Semane. In July 1964, still only 17 years of age, Dyani went into exile with the Blue Notes, Chris McGregor, Dudu Pukwana, Mongezi Feza and Louis Moholo. The Blue Notes influenced a lot of musicians in Europe and created a new language of a free music built on a deep African soul. And they were extensive in their impact. Dyani had a certain magic about his playing. He was a magician of the ostinato; the repeated musical phase. Dyani’s ostinato’s were the glue that bound his compositions together, allowing the other instruments and voices to layer their expressions on top to create a kaleidoscope of sound that crossed in and out of many genres. “Johnny Dyani might well be dubbed an ostinato magician for his ingenuity in inventing melodically striking and rhythmically driving repetitive figures. These patterns are generally one or two bars in length, often related in tonality to the pitches of the bass‘ open strings (E, A, D, G) and form the primary building blocks of most of his pieces. Variety is obtained either by transposing the ostinato figures (mostly by a fourth or fifth), by juxtaposing sections with different ostinati or by alternating ostinato patterns and walking bass sections or rubato passages. Music examples 1-6 offer some characteristic examples of ostinato figures drawn from Dyani’s compositional output. It has to be added that repetition as a principle is also a salient feature of Dyani’s bass playing in a freely improvised context.” Wilson

Acknowledgements

Built around the timeless musical compositions of Johnny Dyani: 30.11.45 – 24.10.86: Jazz Against Apartheid is a complete archive of 30 years of exile history. The musical collaboration around the work of Dyani continue to inspire. Jazz Against Apartheid is a complete archive of 30 years of exile history. The musical collaboration around the work of Dyani continue to inspire. It is a profound cross-fertilization and is developed on a foundation of 30 years of exile history from friendships born and united in South Africa's struggle for freedom.