Jazzman Bokani Dyer presents the live video for “Move On”, the third single from Radio Sechaba, a new album that showcases the colors of South Africa’s buzzing jazz scene.
In 2021, the Brownswood label released Indaba Is, a sort of South African counterpart to the inescapable compilation We Out Here, a showcase of the new British jazz talents we know today. It was Bokani Dyer, our protagonist of the day, who introduced this elegant collection characteristic of the current jazz and improvisation scene that is making South Africa shine, and which did not escape Gilles Peterson’s keen ears. Son of musician Steve Dyer, Bokani was born in 1986 in Gaborone, Botswana, in a community that was fleeing apartheid. Returning to South Africa at the age of seven, he grew up in a country in crisis and today remembers Radio Freedom, the African National Congress radio station that fueled the struggle from the 1970s to the 1990s, linking exiles and resistance fighters. This is what he refers to when he names his album Radio Sechaba -Sechaba meaning Nation- as a sound capsule immortalizing the current state of the people and the country.
Like a spokesman, the pianist, singer and composer translates the present moment into a music that is resolutely jazz, but that draws on all his influences, without ever losing that sense of groove and electronic sensibility already heard within his quintet Soul Housing Project. On Radio Sechaba, Dyer analyzes his people and their environment, addressing themes of nation-building and unity, believing that music can connect people and change minds. It is through a totally feel-good live video that the musician presents his third single “Move On”, a call for calm in the face of life’s difficulties on a background of Afrobeat percussions. From Cape Town, Bokani encourages here to accept difficult situations, not to stay stuck on the problems to let go and move forward. In the message and in the sound, Bokani Dyer offers us here everything we need to hear in these difficult times!
Radio Sechaba out May 12th via Brownswood Records
