Bokani dyer is a Motswana-born, prize-winning pianist that has gained the SAMRO Overseas Scholarship and opened the Greater london Jazz Festival. He is additionally the innovator of a trio along with bassist Romy Brauteseth and drummer Sphelelo Mazibuko.
Dyer’s music is a rich mix of impacts and tips. It merges factors of a variety of genres without ever before becoming contemporary or even disorderly.
His Life
Bokani Dyer is actually an acclaimed pianist as well as composer that integrates standard African rhythms with jazz music. His structures are identified through intricate arrangements and also moving tunes which have astounded readers around the planet. He has actually performed along with worldwide greats like Shabaka Hutchings and Jason Moran as well as local stalwarts such as Feya Faku, Shane Cooper, Sisonke Xonti and Pal Wells. BOKANI DYER
Birthed in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, Dyer grew up listening to the likes of Pat Metheny, Khadja Nin and also Oliver Mtukudzi, whose popular music was actually played in his household home. As he expanded older, he participated in the radical multi-disciplinary crafts collective Medu in Botswana where he executed and generated films, staged concerts, placed art exhibits and also administered artistic shops.
Observing Medu, Dyer moved to Johannesburg where he gained an undergraduate’s level in popular music coming from the University of Peninsula City. During the course of his time at the tertiary organization, he formed sustaining links along with a range of performers that are today partners with him in one type or an additional including bassist Shane Cooper and also vocalist Sakhile Moleshe.
After accomplishing his researches, he released his 1st self-released cd in 2010, adhered to through Emancipate The Account in 2011. In 2015, he captured Planet Songs with a quintet featuring best South African artists consisting of tone saxophonist Feya Faku, pianist/composer Jonathan Jephta, drummer Friend Wells and bassist Shane Cooper. His triad album Neo Indigenous was discharged in 2019 and also got a SAMA nomination for finest jazz cd. He additionally launched Kelenosi, an entirely single cd produced under astronomical disorders in 2020.
His Music
The Motswana-South Black pianist and also author Bokani dyer is a pressure to be considered in jazz music. Technically experienced past his years, he is also creative and artistic in an assortment of jazz categories. His popular music reasons an extensive stable of impacts and is embeded in heritage while taking advantage of modern concepts as well as options.
The trumpeted multi-hyphenate’s most up-to-date release is actually a comprehensive cd named Globe Popular music, his initial for the prominent Gilles Peterson print on Brownswood Records. The file complies with up student standout Emancipate the Account, and also improves it, blending a set of broad effects to generate an anti-genre report along with a distinctive identity of its personal.
Along with the album, he unites experienced stars like drummer Hassan Khan and saxophonists Linda Sikhakhane, John Swanson and Robin Fassie-Kock, along with more youthful bloods like trumpeter Sthembiso Bhengu and also bassist Tendai Shoko. The result is a hypnotic combination of notion and also emotional machinery.
In 2014, he was actually chosen for a Pro Helvetia cashed performer post degree residency in Switzerland where he met performers Donat Fisch, Stephan Kurmann and Norbert Pfammatter who joined him to create the Bokani Dyer Swiss Quintet. The ensemble went on to dip into the opening of the London Jazz Event and travelled South Africa with stuffed display in Master William’s City, Johannesburg as well as Maputo.
His Cds
For Bokani Dyer, a pianist as well as composer, the songs goes to the facility of his globe. He creates jazz popular music along with factors of electronic, R&B, Afro-Latin as well as classic. His design goes to once imaginative as well as stylish, as affirmative as it is inquisitive.
He has presently released 5 albums – his debut, Mirrors, in 2010, followed by Emancipate the Tale in 2013, Oscillations in 2014 and 2015’s Globe Music (which was actually recommended for finest jazz music album at the South Black Popular Music Awards), and a trio recording, Neo Indigenous, which succeeded the honor in 2019.
The brand-new document, Broadcast Sechaba, was actually provided on digital, compact disc as well as 12″ vinyl fabric formats on the 12th of Might 2023 through Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings label. The cd centers on nation-building and also uniformity– motifs that are actually close to his heart, given his roots in a Botswanan area in expatriation from apartheid.
The 14-track offering components spiritual meditative moments, boosting spirited gouges and also an impressive mix of music styles– soulful secrets as well as vocals, jazz-funk as well as Afrobeat collision, punchy horns and also additional. Along with his personal having fun, he sponsored an all-star cast for the sessions, featuring trumpeter Sthembiso Bhengu, saxophonists Linda Sikhakhane and Steve Dyer, guitarists Alder du Toit and also Keenan Ahrends, bassist Tendai Shoko as well as drummer Tinotenda Dambaneunga. Pair of advancement singles from the album – Resonance of Fact along with its West African groove and appeal to follow your reality, and also Relocate On with its contact us to relax as well as breathe– set the tone for this terrific report.
His Tours
Bokani Dyer is among South Africa’s the majority of well-known jazz pianists, and also he consistently explores globally. His band includes a host of worldwide as well as SA entertainers, featuring bassist Shane Cooper, saxophonist Sisonke Xonti as well as vocalist Sakhile Moleshe. Having invested his early years in Botswana, where he fulfilled a variety of his existing collaborators, it is actually not a surprise that his songs attracts motivation coming from an abundant and also diverse heritage.
After graduating from UCT, he joined pressures with drummer Sphelelo Mazibuko to create a triad which debuted at the 2016 SA National Arts Festivity. The band additionally travelled Switzerland in 2015, participating in crammed shows in Basel, Zurich, Bern as well as Wintethur.
In the very same year, he was actually selected to do at the reputable Jazzahead feature in Bremen as well as took place to make saxophonist Sisonke’s launching cd, Iyonde. He is likewise the developer of a normal slot at The Orbit Jazz Club in Johannesburg, the Jazzafrika Legacy Sessions, which commemorates the work of recognized as well as arising SA jazz composers.
The band is actually a powerful power to be considered on stage as well as the interplay between them goes over. It’s to Bokani’s credit that he can easily coordinate the get-up therefore properly, but also give space for individual participants to beam, as holds true when he opens his set with the ballad Vuvuzela or on the hard bop tune Secret Notes.