Rejoice/Together

Johnny Mbizo Dyani

(Cadillac)

THE booming South African bass virtuoso Johnny Mbizo Dyani was born in

the Duncan Village township on the edge of East London in 1945.

By the early '60s he was a member of a forbidden multiracial band, The

Blue Notes.

"We rebelled against this apartheid regime that whites and blacks

couldn't play together," he declared. "We stood up!"

In 1964 the Blue Notes left South Africa for a European exile.

Dyani's fire was soon noticed by the soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy,

who took him on a tour to Argentina and recorded the classic album The

Forest and the Zoo with him in 1966.

By the early '70s Dyani was based in Copenhagen and, after a decade,

he moved to Sweden. During these Scandinavian years he made a

succession of fine albums -- five of them on the Steeplechase label,

and played with such jazz eminences as Leo Wadad Smith, Don Cherry and

David Murray, taking his South African pulse to the very heart of

jazz.

He died, much mourned, in 1986.

This reissue of two of his finest albums on John Jack's precious

Cadillac label is a rare gift of sound.

In October 1972 Dyani made Rejoice in a trio ensemble called Xaba -- a

Xhosa name of God -- with his confrere from the Blue Notes,

Queenstown-born trumpeter Mongezi Feza, and Istanbul-born drummer Okay

Temiz, a graduate of the Ankara Conservatory who found his way to

Stockholm and played on Don Cherry's album Orient.

The opener Mad High begins with a lightning burst from Feza with

Temiz's Turkish drums and cymbals splattering over Dyani's uplifting

and humming bass.

Feza's excitation continues spurred by his confreres' relentless

rhythmic undertow, before Dyani's sonic

trampoline of a solo and Temiz's percussive fury unites the Cape with

the Bosphorus.

Feza's own Golden Horn is at the heart of Makaya Makaya, a reference

to the Cape Town-born drummer Makaya Ntshoko, who made a similar

journey to a European uprooting with Abdullah Ibrahim in 1962.

Dyani's bass sounds huge and Feza almost funereal as he begins, but as

he breaks into ecstatic phrases and bold cadences he seems to be

expressing the cruel frustrations of exile.

Dyani's solo springs mightily beside Temiz's fragile bells. Dyani's

throbbing solo notes in Pukwana open the tribute to his old Blue Notes

bandmate.

Bass strings have never been plucked so hard, so beautifully or with

so much drama, and when Feza enters the music morphs into melody and

dance, almost miraculously, and Temiz's drums crash like giant waves

next to his notes.

The simple tune of Imbongolo spills from Feza's horn before his

inspired improvisation which retains its joyous air and soaring

invention until Dyani's palpitating notes and a unified vocal chorus

takes the music home, ready for the 20 very restless minutes of Mad

High Revisited, showing Xaba in even more exalted splendour.

Johnny's Kwela is sheer cavort, with Pukwana blowing the theme above a

raucous communal vocal and Hassan Bah's restless congas.

Marabi Soweto lets loose the spirit of dance with Dyani's musical

muttering at one with the stamping beat.

Kenny Hakansson's slashing guitar rakes through Kalahari and Dyani's

tune for the infamous Cape township, Crossroads, evokes the ferment of

anti-apartheid defiance that its people generated over decades of

resistance.

Finally there is the last tune, Tula Tula, where Dyani's repeated

emphatic cry of "You Did it! You did it!" alongside the saxophones and

Perrera's cutting-edge harp is a message to his people and also a

message to the world.