Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
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A unique piano voice
Chris Searle reviews Bokani Dyer’s Emancipate the Story (Dyertribe Records)
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
Special report by PEOPLE’S WORLD
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
Bokani Dyer was born in Gaborone, Botswana in 1986, the son of a family living in exile from apartheid. His father is Steve Dyer, a South African saxophonist, so Bokani was steeped in music from his earliest years.
He remembers hours of listening to his father’s music as a boy, but it wasn’t until he was 16 that he started playing the piano, provoked by hearing some Janet Jackson songs and then going on to take formal piano lessons.
When he left school after periods of living in both Gaborone and Johannesburg, he studied the jazz programme at the University of Cape Town — now free from the strictures of apartheid. He graduated in 2008 and in 2009 was awarded a three-week scholarship in New York, where he was tutored by the prime pianist Jason Moran.
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