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Steve Dyer – Enhlizweni: track tales from my heartland
(Ropeadope/AfricArise. Album evaluation by Jon Turney)
Saxophonist, composer and producer Steve Dyer has been an essential presence on the South African scene since returning to the nation within the Nineties. He introduced influences from time spent in Botswana after which Zimbabwe, the place he lived in anti-Apartheid exile for some years, refusing conscription into the white South African Defence Power. Since then, he’s labored on a wide range of initiatives, and this new recording is his newest try and discover the breadth of the nation’s jazz.
It comes at a time when, as he stated in a current radio interview, “one of many success tales of democratic South Africa is so many younger improvising musicians taking the music ahead”.
A kind of is his son, the pianist Bokani Dyer, and among the gamers right here – notably alto saxophonist Mthunzi Mvubu, trumpeter Sthembiso Bhengu and drummer Sphelelo Mazibuko – featured on the youthful Dyer’s glorious album Radio Sechaba final yr. However the brand new file encompasses a rotating personnel, with Andile Yenana sharing keyboard duties with each Dyers, a brace of bassists, a vocal quartet, and others.
Dyer Senior marshals them to good impact in a set the place he tried “to have a look at every track as a chapter in a ebook”. That makes it a wonderful alternative for one in all two debut releases on the brand new AfricArise imprint, a collaboration between Ropeadope data and Metropolis of Gold Arts which is able to supply new recordings from the nation, and tour choices (solely within the US for now, alas) to mark the thirtieth anniversary this yr of South African independence.
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The composer’s ebook provides a spread of kinds. Some are smoother than listeners who nonetheless treasure The Blue Notes could affiliate with South African Jazz, however all have a rolling rhythmic bounce that appears exhausting to seize wherever else. Steve Dyer, who contributes on voice, keyboards and guitar in addition to saxophones and flute, is adept at working up comparatively easy supplies into absorbing preparations that showcase his collaborators to good impact.
The result’s a rewarding mixture of previous and new. The early tracks lead a rigorously deliberate, layered manufacturing, largely at a measured middling tempo, melodically catchy, sturdy on the gently elegiac, eschewing the ecstatic. The final third of the set feels as if it reaches again a bit additional than the remaining. A few tracks that includes Mvubu’s poised and poignant alto are pleasingly harking back to Abdullah Ibrahim’s little large band Ekaya. Then Yenana returns for Uyivile, which evokes reminiscences of his work with the late, nice Zim Ngqawana, with Dyer rising spiritedly to what would have been Zim’s alto function and a stirring trumpet solo from Bhengu. The album finishes with a easy choral association of the Apartheid-era anthem Senzeni Na? (What have we executed?). It’s an affecting look again on a set that additionally appears to be like ahead to a future flourishing of South African jazz.
Jon Turney writes about jazz, and different issues, from Bristol. jonturney.wordpress.com
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