Remnants: Cherry and Dyani
What lingers in the archive? What breaths of Black life persist in its folds? What are the aural, visual, and tactile traces that hold both beauty and tension? These questions set the direction for the exhibition Remnants, which is currently on display at Tensta Konsthall in Stockholm. The starting point is the collaboration between Don Cherry and the South African bassist Johnny Dyani, who lived in exile in Europe for many years.
In 1970, Don Cherry, Johnny Dyani and the Turkish percussionist Okay Temiz formed the group Eternal Ethnic Sound. Just as the exhibition Remnants highlights the traces left by the African diaspora, Eternal Ethnic Sound was to leave its mark with music that drew inspiration from several continents. It was music that grew out of love, but also out of the harsh necessity of exile. Just listen to the wonderful album Blue Lake, recorded in Paris in 1971.
The group was one of the very first in what would later be called world music, where different origins were allowed to create something new. At the same time, the origins were allowed to remain important. In Cherry and Dyanis’ long and sporadic collaboration, this would prove true time and again. Not least when they played alongside Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim).
"Remnants pulls together a poetic constellation of gestures by living and departed artists, where pasts and presents meet in chorus", as stated in the program. "In the exhibition, we encounter works that resonate with historical memory, resistance, improvisation, and the lived experiences of diaspora and exile. Together, they unfold through the rhythm and sound of jazz music." In many ways, that is exactly what Don Cherry and Johnny Dyanis’s music did.
If you get the chance, do go and see the exhibition. Artists: Ikram Abdulkadir, Simnikiwe Buhlungu, Don Cherry, Kudzanai Chiurai, Nina Cramer and Ellen Nyman, Doug Crutchfield, Salad Hilowle, Ernest Mancoba, Wonga Mancoba. Curator: Tawanda Appiah. It will show until 10 January 2027.
Magnus Nygren
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