Johnny Mbizo Dyani : Songbook Launch
13 December @ 12:00 pm - 17 December @ 6:00 pm
Jazz Against Apartheid artistic director, saxophonist Daniel Guggenheim supported by Jazz Against Apartheid international luminaries and South African based collaborators has transcribed 20 compositions of Dyani into a Songbook. These compositions are the foundation level of the JAA educational programme and are reproduced “for my people, for my country,” as Johnny Mbizo Dyani put it.
A valuable resource for future generations and a profound step forward in making an essential aspect of the buried cultural heritage accessible to a young generation of professional musicians who have grown up in the post-Apartheid society.
Your support will help the next generation to learn of the richness of the artistic heritage of South African jazz in exile at the masterful international level that the music has been cultivated over decades in Europe and especially in Germany.
The composition are steeped in the frontline liberation musical movement, combined with sentimental African Xhosa folk music , avant-garde and improvisational, free Jazz expression. The compositions are a coherent merging of folk and jazz music, expressing the functionality of folk music, combined with the freedom of jazz.
It was on these compositions that a community of like-minds abroad 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.
Today these compositions are the foundation level of the JAA educational programme. Help us build a commuinty of our fiture musical leaders.
100% of this donation call is to cover the cost of copyright licences of the material for the Johnny Dyani Songbook from his Swedish based record company, Steeplechase.