A multi award-winning and established artist, with a growing global reputation, Bokani Dyer was born 1986 in Gaborone, Botswana, where many artists from South Africa, including his father, musician Steve Dyer, were living in exile during apartheid. Dyer moved back to SA as a child in 1990, growing up mainly in Johannesburg before moving to study jazz at the prestigious University of Cape Town (UCT), where he graduated with distinction. Since then he has established a live, recording and collaborative career that puts him at the forefront of the new wave of jazz artists coming out of South Africa. The 2011 winner of South Africa’s prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Jazz, Dyer has recorded six albums under his own name including his most recent, 2023’s Radio Sechaba which was released by Brownswood Recordings, a London-based independent record label founded by Gilles Peterson. From his first days as a musician, Dyer has also embraced the jazz tradition of collaboration and ensemble work. In 2018 he recorded the album Neo Native with the Bokani Dyer Trio which won the South African Music Award for Best Jazz Album in 2019 and, in January 2021, Dyer’s “Ke Nako” was the opening track on Indaba Is – a compilation of current South African improvised music and jazz released by Brownswood Recordings. Among his many domestic and international live performances are an acclaimed show with his trio at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam in 2022.