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.

Wilson nails it in his revision: “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.”

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.”

In ‘Grandmother’s Teachings,’ Johnny Mbizo remembers the early evening stories told in front of the kitchen stove by his old Gogo. Grandmothers in the Xhosa experience were nurturers, transmitters of language proficiency and finesse, cultural norms and social and moral values.

‘Namhlanje siyajabula – Today we are Happy,’ hearkens to this yearning for home, back to the village song, with the ukuxhensa dance by the maidens. Johnny, fully-kitted with his upright bass, and clad as a warrior for humanity. An artist conscious of his calling to keep and promote the wise teachings he got from the sages in the village. Mbizo’s rebel spirit was a connector to his identity, to his roots in Africa. Mbizo Johnny was always the chanter, the poet, the one who harangues and the singer. With his associates and collaborators like Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Jonas Gwangwa, Bheki Mseleku and Hugh Masekela, Mbizo was a passionate singer.

In ‘Lament for Crossroads,’ you will hear the thin, searing neighing of underfed horses, ribs bulging, beneath the soot-black skin, that pull coal-yard carts, making shack-homes deliveries through the rain, the wind and cold of Cape Town. That Mbizo is a world African musician shines clearly through in his piece ‘Appear.’ A conversation with the influential Afro-Caribbean music of Cuba and the pan drum of Trinidad. The calypso of the windward islands.

In the tune, ‘Portrait for Mosa Gwangwa,’ I loudly hear the harsh, rough, edgy alto and tenor voices in a call and response:
Bagaetsho Bagaetsho Re tlo kgutla
Re kguthlele kgaye! My people. My people. We shall return
Return back Home!

‘Song for the Workers’ is Blues: ragtime (1930s in Kimberley), Marabi (1940s-1950s in Sophiatown and Mbaqanga, 1960s, 1980s. Makgona Tsothle and Soul Brothers bands. So heady and fragrant with Jonas Mosa Gwangwa, Hugh Masekela and Caiphus Semenya of the Union of South Africa band! U.D.F, the United Democratic Front, the anti-Apartheid movement, rendering this sheer Toyi Toyi dance of the defiant marches by the Young Lions at the peak of SADF troops occupying the townships. The 1986 2nd State of Emergency! Mbizo pays tribute to the alto saxophone of Dudu Pukwana and the trumpet of Hugh Masekela in that iconic record, ‘Home is Where the Music is,’ with this fine track, ‘Kalahari lives.’

And ‘Song for Biko’ conjures the somber, funerary march, as it happened in September 1977 when 20 000 mourners converged in Ginsberg. Steve Biko’s coffin carried by the improvised oxen cart, led by the Black People’s Convention of Kenny Rachidi and Tom Manthatha. My mind-eye sees the St. John’s Apostolic brass band marching to the cemetery. If you listen closely, can you hear that pure, soaring soprano in the track Winnie Mandela? Singing:

Soze bakuthuse Bangabhomba nomuzi Soze sehle isidima sakho They will not scare you Bombing your home. Yet your dignity intact!

This Johnny Mbizo Dyani songbook is the result of the Jazz Against Apartheid movement, a powerful contribution for “my people, for my country,” as co-founder Johnny Mbizo Dyani said.