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Thursday, February 16, 2006
LONELY FLOWER IN THE VILLAGE
Johnny Dyani Quartet
Song for Biko
Steeplechase : 1978 : via Joe at Through The Wire
[Buy It]
One of my great claims to fame is that I was the first person in my little group of friends to buy a CD player. I realised it was the future and invested early. The very first CD I bought was Song for Biko by Johnny Dyani whom I'd never heard of. It was going cheap in a record store where I also bought Milcho Leviev's Blues for the Fisherman which is really an Art Pepper album recorded live at Ronnie Scott's in London but released under Leviev's name because of contractual reasons. I bought the Dyani because Don Cherry was playing on it and because I liked the idea of a CD with Biko in the name. - "Biko," as Peter Gabriel so nicely expressed it. "Oh oh oh Biko!" You know the way that on most CDs the so-called bonus track is not worth listening to - an alternate take that was ditched for quite obvious and audible reasons? Well, in this case the bonus track was the best track: the long, two-part "Lonely Flower in the Village." It starts with Dyani's amazing bass. You only need to hear a couple of notes to hear that he is a great bass player. The interplay between Cherry and Dudu Pukwana is so joyful and lovely. I saw Dudu Pukwana play in the late 80s, in a pub called the Plough in Stockwell. My friend had interviewed him a few months earlier and remembers him drinking a cocktail of cider and Tizer. Dyani was already dead back then but Cherry was still alive. Now they're all dead. Basically everybody's dead and sometimes, in the afternoons, when I can't get anyone to play tennis with, I often wish I was. Either that or I think I may as well be. I don't know about the final member of the quartet, Makaya Ntshoko, the drummer. I don't have the statistics to back it up but I get the impression that drummers tend to live longer than other jazz musicians. I guess it's because they get more exercise.
MAGWAZA
Johnny Dyani
Witchdoctor's Son
Steeplechase : 1978 : via CP at Suburbs...
[Buy It]
It's rather sad, I suppose, that these South African musicians, living in exile, ended up recording in chilly Denmark but there's nothing sad about the music. All the Dyani albums on the Danish Steeplechase label tend only to have one stand-out track on them. In the case of Witchdoctor's Son it's" Magwaza," a traditional song arranged by Dyani. It reminds me of something very important in jazz: the honk. You've got to have a honk. Actually, if you're a sax player you've got to have the call and the cry, but you've got to have a honk. There's an amazing moment in the midst of John Tchicai's solo when Dudu just interrupts with this raucous honk - an indication of what's to come when he gets his turn. This is my favourite solo by Dudu. When he played at the Plough I said hello to him and said my name was Geoff. He said, "I'm Dudu." He certainly was. He still is.
GOOD NEWS / SWAZI / WAYA-WA-EGOLI
Dollar Brand Johnny Dyani
Good News from Africa
Enja : 1973 : via Peter at Worldly Disorientation
[Buy It]
Dyani also recorded some lovely duets with Dollar Brand, on Enja. Since then Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim) has got to be so pious. Everyone worships him so much you wonder if he's ended up worshipping himself. It would do him good to start drinking a bit of cider and Tizer and having a good old honk instead of going around like he's the pope and offering the world some kind of benediction.
THE HARD BLUES (TBH&TFM vers.)
Julius Hemphill
Coon Bid'ness ('75) and
The Hard Blues & the Fat Man ('91)
via Peter at Worldly Disorientation
[Buy Them]
Another honker: "The Hard Blues" on Coon Bid'ness by Julius Hemphill. This is one of the great, little-known jazz tracks and one of the best-named. It builds and builds and then all the musicians come stomping in at the end. Hamiet Bluiett is on baritone sax and he announces himself with this honk the size of a crater. It's vast. And then when, it is all at its most raucous you can hear someone just cry out, caught up in the honking raucousness of it all. I have always assumed it's the drummer Philip Wilson, mainly because of his nickname "Mad Dog". He's dead too.
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Geoff Dyer's many books include But Beautiful, Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It, and, most recently, The Ongoing MomentLabels: geoff dyer, writer's week
posted by Alex
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