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Contents
editorial
DJO BANKUNA
Pissing On The Rainbow Nation
NATHAN TRANTRAAL
Ôs haatie wit mense nie. Hoekô haat julle vi ôs?
GLENN HOLTZMAN
The Music Department in South Africa as a Mirror of Racial Tension and Transformative Struggle: A Critical Ethnographic Perspective
TENDAYI SITHOLE
Black artists and the paradox of the gift
Theme Johnny Mbizo Dyani
ZWELEDINGA PALLO JORDAN
JOHNNY DYANI: A Portrait
JOHNNY MBIZO DYANI
A Letter From Mbizo
ARYAN KAGANOF
Johnny Dyani Interview 22-23 December 1985
SALIM WASHINGTON
“Don’t Sell Out”
LOUIS MOHOLO-MOHOLO & HERBIE TSOAELI WITH JOHNNY DYANI
In Conversation with Mbizo
ZOLISWA FIKELEPI-TWANI & NDUDUZO MAKHATHINI
When Today Becomes The Past: The Archive as a Healing Process
ASHER GAMEDZE
Tradition as improvisation | Continuity and abstraction
GILBERT MATTHEWS & LEFIFI TLADI
An Interview with Lars Rasmussen
EUGENE SKEEF
The Musical Confluence of Johnny Dyani and Bheki Mseleku in Exile
TENDAYI SITHOLE
Blue Scripts For Johnny Mbizo Dyani - Script i: The Figure
TENDAYI SITHOLE
Blue Scripts For Johnny Mbizo Dyani - Script ii: Ontology Of The Bass
TENDAYI SITHOLE
Blue Scripts For Johnny Mbizo Dyani - Script iii: Musical Offering
TENDAYI SITHOLE
Blue Scripts For Johnny Mbizo Dyani - Script iv: Home And Exile
TENDAYI SITHOLE
Blue Scripts For Johnny Mbizo Dyani - Script v: Experimental Philosophic Incantations
TENDAYI SITHOLE
Blue Scripts For Johnny Mbizo Dyani - Script vi: The Posthumous Life
ED EPSTEIN
Spiritual
CAROL MULLER
Diasporic musical landscapes: Abdullah Ibrahim, Johnny Dyani, and Sathima Bea Benjamin in an African Space Program (1969-1980)
BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH
Riot in Progress (Legalize Freedom)
S’MAKUHLE BOKWE MAFUNA
Notes on the Exile Years
KEI MURRAY MONGEZI PROSPER MCGREGOR
Who the Son was?
ARYAN KAGANOF
Somebody Blew Up South Africa
JONATHAN EATO
Interludes with Bra’ Tete Mbambisa
MAX ANNAS
Morduntersuchungskommission. Der Fall Daniela Nitschke
SHANE COOPER
Lonely Flower
THANDI ALLIN DYANI
"I love you. You don’t have to love me but I love you."
galleri
SLOVO MAMPHAGA
Shades of Johnny Dyani
HUGH MDLALOSE
Jazz is my Life
TJOBOLO KHAHLISO
Shebeening
FEDERICO FEDERICI
Notes (not only) on asemic phenomenology
ANDRÉ CLEMENTS
Vita-Socio-Anarcho
DEREK DAVEY
Verge
borborygmus
MUSTAPHA JINADU
Trapped
VUSUMZI MOYO
From Cape-to-Cairo – AZANIA
MALAIKA WA AZANIA
In a foreign tongue...
SHARLENE KHAN
Imagining an African Feminist Press
DILIP MENON
Isithunguthu (A conversation in Joburg)
CATHERINE RUDENT
Against the “Grain of the Voice” - Studying the voice in songs
GEORGE LEWIS
Amo (2021), for five voices and electronics
STEVEN SHAVIRO
Exceeding Syncopation?
BRUCE LABRUCE
Notes on camp/anti-camp
PATRICIA PISTERS
Set and Setting of the Brain on Hallucinogen: Psychedelic Revival in the Acid Western
frictions
KHADIJA TRACEY HEEGER
Doctor Patient
KNEO MOKGOPA
Vuleka Mhlaba (What Would Happen if Madiba Returned?)
CHURCHIL NAUDE
Die mooi mooi gedig en anner massekinners ….
OSWALD KUCHERERA
Travelling on the Khayelitsha Train
SISCA JULIUS
Islands in the stream
FAEEZ VAN DOORSEN
Nobody’s Mullet
GADDAFI MAKHOSANDILE
The Face of Hope
VONANI BILA
Extracts from Phosakufa (the epic)
NIQ MHLONGO
Mistaken Identity
OMOSEYE BOLAJI
People of the Townships part 2
SIMBARASHE NYATSANZA
How to Become an African President
JEAN RHYS
The Doll
OSCAR HEMER
Coyote
MICHALIS PICHLER
Bibliophagia
claque
LINDELWA DALAMBA
From Kippie to Kippies and Beyond: the village welcomes this child
GWEN ANSELL
Zim Ngqawana: A child of the rain
MKHULULI
Black Noise: Notes on a Semanalysis of Mogorosi’s DeAesthetic
LIZE VAN ROBBROECK
DECOLONIZING ART BOOK FAIRS: Publishing Practices from the South(s).
DYLAN VALLEY
The Future lies with folk art: Max Schleser’s smartphone filmmaking THEORY AND PRACTICE
PAUL KHAHLISO
Riding Ruins
DIANA FERRUS
Ronelda Kamfer’s Kompoun: unapologetic and honest writing.
UNATHI SLASHA
Piecing Together the Barely Exquisite Corpse: On Tinashe Mushakavanhu’s Reincarnating Marechera: Notes on the Speculative Archive
WANELISA XABA
One from the heart: Dimakatso Sedite's Yellow Shade
BLAQ PEARL (JANINE VAN ROOY-OVERMEYER)
Uit die Kroes: gedigte deur Lynthia Julius
FRANK MEINTJIES
Wild Has Roots: thinking about what it means to be human
MPHUTHUMI NTABENI
The Land Wars: The Dispossession of the Khoisan and AmaXhosa in the Cape Colony - a discourse on the unrelenting and ruthless process of colonial conquest
ekaya
MKHULU MNGOMEZULU
Call Me By My Name: Ubizo and Ancestral Names for Abangoma
HILDE ROOS
In Conversation with Zakes Mda: "The full story must be told."
INGE ENGELBRECHT
Tribute to Sacks Williams: A composer from Genadendal
ESTHER MARIE PAUW
A tribute to Hilton Biscombe
WILLEMIEN FRONEMAN
Resisting the Siren Song of Race
off the record
SANDILE MEMELA
Things My Father Taught Me
HEIDI GRUNEBAUM
On returning to my grandmother’s land (notes for a film)
HILTON BISCOMBE
A boytjie from Stellenbosch
KHOLEKA SHANGE
Art, Archives, Anthropology
RITHULI ORLEYN
On Archives, Metadata and Aesthetics
KEYAN G. TOMASELLI
The Nomadic Mind of Teshome Gabriel: Hybridity, Identity and Diaspora
FINN DANIELS-YEOMAN & DARA WALDRON
Song For Hector - the utopian promise of the archive
TREVOR STEELE TAYLOR
Censorship, Film Festivals and the Temperature at which Artworks and their Creators Burn - episode 2
GEORGE KING
Sustaining an Imagined Culture: Some Reflections on South African Music Research in Thirty-Five Years of Ars Nova
RAFI ALIYA CROCKETT
Loxion Fabulous: Temporality and Spaciality in South African Kwaito Performance
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Archive About Contact Africa Open Institute
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    #07
  • Theme Johnny Mbizo Dyani

SALIM WASHINGTON

“Don’t Sell Out”

Interview with Johnny Mbizo Dyani by Aryan Kaganof, 23rd December 1985, Lauriergracht 116, Amsterdam, office of the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement (AABN), Tape 1, Side A.
Interview with Johnny Mbizo Dyani by Aryan Kaganof, 23rd December 1985, Lauriergracht 116, Amsterdam, office of the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement, (AABN), Tape 1, Side B.

This interview with Johnny Mbizo Dyani is an extraordinary document and deserves to be studied closely as a valuable addition to the burgeoning studies of one of South Africa’s greatest bassists. There are numerous insights into Dyani’s music and into the music of South Africa in general. A member of a transitional period in history and the anchor of perhaps the single most important band to go into exile, Dyani’s revision of the history and importance of the Blue Notes comports much better with Bra Louis Moholo’s depiction than it does with Maxine McGregor’s, placing Dudu Pukwana as the spiritual and creative leader of the band rather than Chris McGregor. In the words of Mbizo, if Chris was the arranger, Dudu was the composer. And it was Pukwana who taught Chris to play mbaqanga, thereby transforming his entire oeuvre.

L-R: Mbizo Johnny Dyani, Chris McGregor, Dudu Pukwana. Waiting for the bus which drove them to “la fête de l’Humanité” on 10th of September 1977. This picture was taken by Thierry Trombert in Paris (near the Parisian railway station Gare de Lyon) before their concert in a quartet with the French drummer Mino Cinelu. It took place in the suburb of Paris, La Courneuve where the organizer, The Communist Party, had (and still have) the habit of organizing concerts. (Text by Olivier Ledure).

Chris McGregor certainly paid his dues and history shall never lose sight of his importance. This interview, however, is between two people who knew and trusted one another and thus it has a candor and free-wheeling energy that can easily be absent from a formal exercise like an interview. The dynamics between brother McGregor and his comrades was far less hierarchical than is widely known. In the politicized space of the subaltern these black jazz musicians were quite defiant, even cheeky. In fact, humor is a primary force apparently that eased the absurdities of the apartheid era regime with its oppressive policies and interactions. Even with the police the Blue Notes did not cower before authority. They were fully aware of their importance, their excellence and cultural relevance, and absurdity did not diminish that.

Especially poignant are the portraits of Dudu Pukwana and Nick Moyake who could both be described as militant. And it was Dudu (echoing the sentiments of Nick) who charged Chris with the missive “don’t sell out!”. Everyone was aware of what that meant in this context. Not to fall into the trap of accepting racial hierarchy when it was convenient (like when the police were harassing you), or watering down the social practices of marabi when the commercial form of mbaqanga took over after the state’s near destruction of marabi culture. Even the term commercial is complicated in this narrative. For instance, Johnny considered playing bass guitar mbaqanga style with rock bands. There is a distinction made between Hugh Masekela’s forays into the elysian fields of America versus the artistry of Miriam Makeba, and Jonas Gwangwa. Dyani’s descriptions of his peers and his elders back home are also worth the price of admission. He provides an insider’s view to South African jazz culture in East London, Cape Town and elsewhere, paying attention to generational differences, stylistic struggles and the like. He is very eloquent in his defense of the spiritual integrity of the music and the ever thorny question of the role of American jazz for South African musos. Again, this is not only an entertaining look at the music it is downright insightful.

Johnny Mbizo Dyani, 100 Club, London, early 1980s, Photo ©Graham De Smidt
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ARYAN KAGANOF
LOUIS MOHOLO-MOHOLO & HERBIE TSOAELI WITH JOHNNY DYANI
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