Johnny Dyani Songbook

Johnny Mbizo Dyani is a frontline liberation music composer, a sentimental African Xhosa folk music performer and an avant-garde flag-bearer of the improvisational, free Jazz expression. His compositions combine the Eastern Cape Folk Music of his roots, with international progressive jazz of his surroundings, with the expression for freedom from his circumstances. Together with a generation of talented musicians from all over the world, Dyani brought freedom of expression to the jazz movement in Europe, a free music built on African roots. And now this work is back home in South Africa and available worldwide.

Dyani performed his compositions prolifically from the late seventies to his death in 1985 with a diverse group of musicians. He liked to work with people who understood his music, his fight. He remained open and incorporated American and European musicians. He worked with 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.

 “We hear a bass player who has liberated himself from all idiomatic constraints concerning meter or harmony. An autonomous voice in a freely interactive quartet music, utilizing the whole tonal and timbral range of his instrument with virtuoso agility and confidence.” Niklas Wilson

The Annual Jazz Against Apartheid performed 100 concerts all over Europe and the USA and in 2022 for the first time ever came to South Africa, Duncan Village Eastern Cape the home town of Johnny Mbizo Dyani.

The Songbook is a Germany South Africa co-operation. A product of the Jazz Against Apartheid movement from Frankfurt and transcribed by artistic director, saxophonist Daniel Guggenheim it is a groundbreaking collaboration between international and South African musical luminaries. Featuring 20 unique compositions transcribed in 4 keys, the Johnny Dyani is a must have for any musician with a love for South African Jazz Composition.