I still remember an interview I conducted at the turn of the century with Abdullah Ibrahim — pianist, composer, and South African jazz patriarch — in which he argued for the essential continuity between Black people in his country and North America’s African diaspora.
“We never regard it as a separate entity,” Ibrahim told me before a performance at Yoshi’s Oakland. “There’s been a lot of intermarriage. One of my saxophone players, Horace Alexander Young from Houston, Texas, went with us to South Africa for the first time and met his family there. So the interconnectedness is very deep and has been going on for a long time.”
I’ve been thinking again about the enduring ties of culture and kin that bind African Americans and South Africans across some 8,000 miles of ocean. Two eminent jazz artists, Cape Town pianist and vocalist Thembi Dunjana and Johannesburg-based pianist Bokani Dyer, are slated to perform for Bay Area audiences in the coming weeks, while charismatic pop star Thandiswa Mazwai, whose songs draw on traditional Xhosa music, mbaqanga, funk, jazz, and reggae, makes her San Francisco debut on May 2 at the Presidio Theatre.
Mazwai’s latest album, Sankofa, features songs produced by Meshell Ndegeocello and pianist Nduduzo Makhathini — the latter’s recent releases for Blue Note Records have made him the most visible and acclaimed South African jazz artist with a regular presence on U.S. stages. Now, Makhathini is about to have company.
A rising star in Cape Town’s verdant jazz scene, Dunjana has been making waves stateside since Ropeadope released her second album, God Bless iKapa. God Bless Mzantsi, last June. A celebration of her hometown, the project was recorded in New York City with a stellar young binational quintet featuring South African trombonist Siya Charles and the American cast of alto saxophonist Zoe Obadia, bassist Tim Norton, and drummers Jerome Jennings and Darrian Douglas on alternate tracks.
Dunjana, a prolific composer, focused the album on her original pieces, which are steeped in her love of South African jazz piano greats Moses Molelekwa and Bheki Mseleku, filtered through her study of artists such as John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Horace Silver, and Erykah Badu.
She produced the project, but credits Seton Hawkins, who curates Ropeadope’s AfricArise initiative spotlighting exceptional musicians from South Africa and beyond, with connecting her to the New York players. “I would have chosen them, too,” she said on a recent video call from her Cape Town studio.
“It was such an easy thing to work with them, really natural. I didn’t worry about their not being able to grasp the African rhythms. Something about African rhythms and jazz go really well together. And I’m not so precious about my music. I wanted them to add their ideas.”
Dunjana makes her Bay Area debut with a solo recital on March 2 at Oakland’s Piedmont Piano Company. Earlier that same day, she presents a workshop on songwriting with South African jazz harmony at Berkeley’s California Jazz Conservatory. And on March 3, she holds a community event at the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music that includes conversation and performance.
One of the most acclaimed young jazz artists in South Africa, she was still studying at the University of Cape Town when she released her 2020 debut album, Intyatyambo, which garnered her two Mzantsi Jazz Awards (for Best Female Jazz Artist and Best Jazz Song). The album was an ambitious two-disc set designed to showcase her stylistic range, with a first part that “was supposed to highlight my R&B soulful side, and the second was my South African jazz take,” Dunjana said.
“At that point I was really young and had a lot of compositions, and I was into a lot of things. I’m still into a lot more than jazz. I had so much music [that] I thought, ‘Let’s make it a double album.’ I don’t think people were expecting me to release something like that. It got my foot in the door.”
In many ways, Dunjana is heir to the glorious legacy of Cape jazz, a rhapsodically melodic sound that coalesced in Cape Town at the end of the 1950s with the Jazz Epistles, the pioneering ensemble featuring Ibrahim on piano (he was then known as Dollar Brand). Drawing on its members’ love of the Duke Ellington Orchestra and street carnival music, the band built on a half century of deeply embedded interest in Black American music.
“Jazz music made it’s way to South African, and South Africans embraced that culture,” Dunjana explained. “They saw themselves. When we look at the music, the rhythms, the way of singing, there was a gravitation toward not only jazz but Black American culture.
“I don’t like to diffentiate,” Dunjana added, echoing Ibrahim. “There’s a whole diasporic conversation, a flow, and I’m a product of that.”
In his own way, Dyer is also a direct product of the transatlantic dialogue. He made his Bay Area debut last year with a series of dates with Dyertribe, a duo with his father, veteran South African jazz saxophonist Steve Dyer. Bokani Dyer is now returning to the Bay Area for his first performances under his own name, starting with two shows at the SFJAZZ’s Joe Henderson Lab on March 15 with a trio that includes Tim Norton (the New York bassist who anchored Dunjana’s God Bless iKapa. God Bless Mzantsi).
Like Dunjana, Dyer also performs solo at Piedmont Piano Company (on March 16) and holds a community event of music and conversation at the Oakland Public Conservatory (on March 17). Dyer closes the run with his trio on March 20 at Santa Cruz’s Kuumbwa Jazz Center.
“I’ve played two of his songs, ‘Fezile’ and ‘Neo Native,’ [the latter also the name of] a great album of his, and I loved his album World Music,” Dunjana said. “We know each other, and I love his music.”
Though they live on opposite sides of South Africa, it’s not surprising that Dunjana’s and Dyer’s paths have crossed given the tight-knit nature of the national jazz scene. “I’m a bit older, but I’ve seen her quite a bit at this jazz festival where she attended some of my workshops,” Dyer said. “She’s a fantastic composer, and I’m really excited she gets to travel.”
Dyer grew up dividing his time between living with his mother in her native Botswana and his father in Johannesburg, where the saxophonist was deeply enmeshed in the city’s jazz life. At 39, the younger Dyer has now been at the center of the South African music scene for almost two decades and has gained international recognition with a series of excellent albums. His latest release, 2023’s Radio Sechaba, is an expansive project that reflects his far-flung sources of inspiration.
“I always try to be as open as possible, to let my influences run riot,” the pianist said. “Sometimes my albums are all over the place, different worlds from one track to another. I don’t mind that. There’s a lot in there, from jazz to stuff not considered jazz, [such as] soul and R&B and Afrobeat.”
But much like Dunjana, Dyer tends to see continuity between styles rather than borders. There are intermingled roots between the U.S. and South Africa “going back to the 1800s, when ships came in to Cape Town with African American performers,” he pointed out.
“These artists inspired South Africans in a big way — seeing Black people doing these amazing things, the potential that Black men could achieve. At the same time, there was church music. Abdullah Ibrahim’s grandmother founded an African Methodist Episcopal church, and the sound of those hymns are still associated with the South African jazz sound. It’s all kind of interlinked.”
