Biography
Bokani Dyer, an award-winning singer, pianist, composer, and producer born in South Africa, folds electronic music, R&B, Afro-Latin, and classical elements into his jazz. Ranked among the country’s most gifted keyboardists, he favors an inventive approach whose distinctive handling of the piano’s middle register stands virtually alone, yet remains elegant and often as breezy and affirmative as it is inquisitive. Lessons with Jason Moran in New York preceded the 2010 debut Mirrors. The following year’s Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Jazz financed the star-studded Emancipate the Story, after which Oscillations arrived in 2013. World Music, released in 2015, received a Best Jazz Album nomination at the South African Music Awards; the 2019 trio album Neo Native captured the honor. Kelenosi, laid down entirely solo during the 2020 pandemic, preceded Radio Sechaba, issued on Brownswood in May 2023.
Gaborone, Botswana, was the 1986 birthplace of Dyer, whose arrival came while apartheid still governed South Africa. His father, veteran saxophonist and composer Steve Dyer, belonged to the generation of South African artists then working in exile. The family moved to South Africa in 1990 when Bokani was four. Piano study began at age fourteen; although the teenager hoped to enroll at Berklee College of Music in the United States, his father directed him instead toward jazz training at the University of Cape Town, from which he graduated in 2008. There he encountered fellow young musicians intent on merging South African traditions with global emerging styles. Two international scholarships followed, underwriting lessons and master classes with internationally recognized artists, among them pianist Andrew Lilley.
Dyer’s music reflects his father’s restless, genre-crossing work with the band Southern Freeway. Additional touchstones for the pianist include Moses Taiwa Molelekwa and Bheki Mseleku. Runner-up placement in the 2009 SAMRO Overseas Scholarships competition funded travel to New York and further study with Jason Moran. Mirrors, composed entirely of original material, appeared in 2010. Emancipate the Story followed the next year; its personnel comprised trumpeters Marcus Wyatt and Mandla Mlangeni, saxophonist Buddy Wells, drummer/percussionists Ayanda Sikade and Tony Paco, bassist Shane Cooper, and guitarist Mark Buchanan, all assembled with funds from the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Jazz.
Dyer’s first European tour encompassed Switzerland, Germany, the Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom, culminating in an invitation to open the London Jazz Festival that November. Seven months later, in July 2015, the septet album World Music appeared, featuring Wells, Cooper, trumpeter Robin Fassie-Kock, saxophonist Justin Bellairs, and a vocal chorus. International and domestic airplay earned the recording a 2016 South African Music Awards nomination for Best Jazz Album. That year also brought a guest appearance on tenor saxophonist Sisonke Xonti’s debut Iyonde and a solo performance at the launch of the SA/Russia Cultural Seasons in Moscow.
Soundtrack work began in 2017 with the score for the South African film Catching Feelings, while Dyer performed at every major African jazz festival during the same period. Neo-Native, released in 2019, paired bassist Romy Brauteseth and drummer Sphelelo Mazibuko in a trio whose members supplied chorus vocals, fusing jazz modernism with South African traditions and securing the year’s South African Music Award for Best Jazz Album.
When the COVID-19 pandemic halted a collaborative project in early 2020, Dyer turned to solo piano pieces that he gradually augmented with original beats, basslines, samples, and additional instrumentation. The resulting Kelenosi—Setswana for “alone”—surfaced later that year to international acclaim. Its blend of Afrobeat, neo-electro, jive, jazz, salsa, and R&B drew attention from the South London scene and Brownswood founder Gilles Peterson. Dyer contributed the opening track “Ke Nako” to the label’s 2021 South African jazz overview Indaba Is, curated by Thandi Ntuli and Siyabonga Mthembu.
Radio Sechaba, Dyer’s Brownswood debut, emerged in May 2023, finally realizing the project interrupted by the pandemic. The fourteen-track collection of originals, dense with guests, presented the full spectrum of his South African, North American, and international influences for the first time; Steve Dyer appeared among the many contributors. Recording and mixing took place at the family’s Dyertribe Studio in Johannesburg, handled by Dyer and Sheppo Mothwa.
Gaborone, Botswana, was the 1986 birthplace of Dyer, whose arrival came while apartheid still governed South Africa. His father, veteran saxophonist and composer Steve Dyer, belonged to the generation of South African artists then working in exile. The family moved to South Africa in 1990 when Bokani was four. Piano study began at age fourteen; although the teenager hoped to enroll at Berklee College of Music in the United States, his father directed him instead toward jazz training at the University of Cape Town, from which he graduated in 2008. There he encountered fellow young musicians intent on merging South African traditions with global emerging styles. Two international scholarships followed, underwriting lessons and master classes with internationally recognized artists, among them pianist Andrew Lilley.
Dyer’s music reflects his father’s restless, genre-crossing work with the band Southern Freeway. Additional touchstones for the pianist include Moses Taiwa Molelekwa and Bheki Mseleku. Runner-up placement in the 2009 SAMRO Overseas Scholarships competition funded travel to New York and further study with Jason Moran. Mirrors, composed entirely of original material, appeared in 2010. Emancipate the Story followed the next year; its personnel comprised trumpeters Marcus Wyatt and Mandla Mlangeni, saxophonist Buddy Wells, drummer/percussionists Ayanda Sikade and Tony Paco, bassist Shane Cooper, and guitarist Mark Buchanan, all assembled with funds from the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Jazz.
Dyer’s first European tour encompassed Switzerland, Germany, the Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom, culminating in an invitation to open the London Jazz Festival that November. Seven months later, in July 2015, the septet album World Music appeared, featuring Wells, Cooper, trumpeter Robin Fassie-Kock, saxophonist Justin Bellairs, and a vocal chorus. International and domestic airplay earned the recording a 2016 South African Music Awards nomination for Best Jazz Album. That year also brought a guest appearance on tenor saxophonist Sisonke Xonti’s debut Iyonde and a solo performance at the launch of the SA/Russia Cultural Seasons in Moscow.
Soundtrack work began in 2017 with the score for the South African film Catching Feelings, while Dyer performed at every major African jazz festival during the same period. Neo-Native, released in 2019, paired bassist Romy Brauteseth and drummer Sphelelo Mazibuko in a trio whose members supplied chorus vocals, fusing jazz modernism with South African traditions and securing the year’s South African Music Award for Best Jazz Album.
When the COVID-19 pandemic halted a collaborative project in early 2020, Dyer turned to solo piano pieces that he gradually augmented with original beats, basslines, samples, and additional instrumentation. The resulting Kelenosi—Setswana for “alone”—surfaced later that year to international acclaim. Its blend of Afrobeat, neo-electro, jive, jazz, salsa, and R&B drew attention from the South London scene and Brownswood founder Gilles Peterson. Dyer contributed the opening track “Ke Nako” to the label’s 2021 South African jazz overview Indaba Is, curated by Thandi Ntuli and Siyabonga Mthembu.
Radio Sechaba, Dyer’s Brownswood debut, emerged in May 2023, finally realizing the project interrupted by the pandemic. The fourteen-track collection of originals, dense with guests, presented the full spectrum of his South African, North American, and international influences for the first time; Steve Dyer appeared among the many contributors. Recording and mixing took place at the family’s Dyertribe Studio in Johannesburg, handled by Dyer and Sheppo Mothwa.
Albums
Singles
