Name: MBIZO! A gathering for Johnny Dyani
Start: 2025-03-08T20:30:00-06:00
Location: 3111 N Western Ave Chicago IL 60618

8:30pm.
MBIZO! A gathering for Johnny Dyani
Presented by Chicago Humanities Festival and the Art Institute of Chicago

Featuring:

Dee Alexander- voice
Nicole Mitchell - flute,electronics
Adam Zanolini- woodwinds, bass, etc.
Fred Jackson - Woodwinds
Ernest Dawkins- Woodwinds
Ben LaMar Gay- Cornet, Electronics
Sharon Udoh- Piano
Ivan Taylor- Bass
JoVia Armstrong - Percussion
Naydja Bruton - Drums

By the time 39-year-old Johnny "Mbizo" Dyani collapsed and died, backstage, following a performance at the Berlin Jazz Festival in 1986, he'd been seeking freedom, relentlessly, for over two decades. From the day the youngster jumped on stage in Duncan Village, South Africa, to jam with Chris McGregor’s Blue Notes on a borrowed bass, through exile in Europe from 1964, and through dozens of boundary-breaking collaborations, Dyani’s mission was to set the music free. Refusing to bow to apartheid and colonialism, "jumping a bass-line like humping a landmine" (Lesego Rampolokeng).
In various configurations of the Blue Notes, from the classic quintet to the trio Music for Xaba to the Brotherhood of Breath collective, Dyani and his South African comrades sought to establish new paths for Black spiritualism, liberation and experimentation. Departing from iingoma zasemaXhoseni (musical traditions of the Xhosa people), while blending the blues and the harmonies of bop with the grammar of marabi - a popular dance style from the townships of Johannesburg in the 1920s.
Through platforms such as Don Cherry's Organic Music Society, Abdullah Ibrahim's African Space Program and Pierre Dorge's New Jungle Orchestra, and in collaboration with the first wave of Chicago's AACM expatriates in Europe in the late 1960s, Dyani articulated his conception of the "sk'enge", an all-world (tout-monde) sound, akin to the AACM's quest for "Great Black Music - from ancient to future". His last group, Witchdoctor's Son, which performed that fateful autumn evening in Berlin, was dedicated to taking us, in the words of the late, great poet Keorapetse Kgositsile, "out there",
where we gasp silently
amidst a bombardment of sound
in the spell of the witchdoctor's son
where I cannot even ponder
how a witch and a doctor paradox
could be one entity.
Johnny Dyani's nickname was "Mbizo", isiXhosa for "a gathering to share knowledge". His vision is a guiding force for the work of Chimurenga. And it is our honour to present a performance of his music, the sound of "Panafrica", co-conducted by two of Chicago's favourite musical sons, Adam Zanolini and Ben Lamar Gay.
Chimurenga's bio: Founded by Ntone Edjabe in Cape Town in 2002, Chimurenga is a project-based mutable object, workspace, and pan-African platform for editorial activities. See chimurengachronic.co.za [http://chimurengachronic.co.za/]