Peter Brötzmann Group - ‘Fuck De Boere (Dedicated To Johnny Dyani)’

Johnny Dyani was one of the many great jazz musicians to leave apartheid South Africa in the 1960s. As a member of Chris McGregor's Blue Notes, the bassist helped transform the London jazz scene, before settling in Scandinavia in the 1970s. Active in the European avant-garde, Dyani befriended German saxophone colossus Peter Brötzmann, who dedicated this 1970 Frankfurt Jazz Festival set to him. 'Fuck De Boere' takes its name from how Dyani would end his accounts of life in South Africa. As such, it's one of European free jazz's most powerful political statements. Performed by an unconventional bass-free tentet, 'Fuck De Boere' is looser and less propulsive than Brötzmann's iconic 1968 recording, Machine Gun, continually building and pulling itself apart over 36 minutes. At around the five minute mark, Brötzmann sets the emotional pitch with a harrowing cry of anger and pain. Later, the horns shriek like industrial steam valves, before a decisive percussive wallop from Han Bennink clears the air for a remarkable solo from Derek Bailey. As Bailey's guitar buzzes like a swarm of cyborg insects, Bennink skitters around his drum frames, before the horns interrupt with long, pained howls. 24 minutes in, Fred Van Hove enters on organ, sounding like a warped tape loop of Jimmy Smith played at high-speed, before drenching the band in fizzing acid. Paul Rutherford's oddly swinging trombone solo leads into a climactic free blow out, before a stirring finale that recalls the psalm-like compositions of Dyani's fellow exile McGregor.
Stewart Smith