Johnny Dyani was a South African jazz double bassist, pianist and composer from East London in the Cape Province who began his career in the early 1960s within Cape Town's vibrant jazz scene and later left South Africa to pursue an international career in Europe. Rooted in South African township melodies and the blues, his music combined bebop and free jazz elements and evolved through collaboration and exile into a personal blend that emphasised lyrical bass lines, dense ensemble interplay and compositions reflecting political and cultural displacement.
