Geoffrey Diver

Geoffrey Smuts, artist name Geoffrey Diver, is a South African musician and sound designer based in Johannesburg. Primarily a solo artist in his current practice, Diver creates a diverse range of original musical offerings using guitar, voice, and a loop pedal.

Armed with a powerful voice and a background in theatre and ethnomusicology, Diver draws on a wide variety of creative influences to create songs and soundscapes that are alive with catchy hooks, emotive harmonies, and unusual textures. His music incorporates elements from a wide variety of genres, including prog rock, neo soul, desert blues, and various folk music forms from around the world. His primary musical influences include Khruangbin, Tinariwen, Tool, Tananas, Carlo Mombelli & Dhafer Youssef.

Diver has played a prominent role in Amaza, a collaborative sound journey project led by Qhawekazi Giyose, and has shared line-ups with well known South African artists like The Brother Moves On and Tubatsi Moloi. Other recent musical ventures include singing male lead on a symphonic-metal concept album by Michael John Anderson, 'Life of The Daydreamer' (2023), as well as features in songs by Dumama and Senna Marie (publications pending). Solo projects pending publication are a live EP and a live video performance, and he is currently working towards a full length album.

As a sound designer Diver has created sound-scores for a range of theatre productions and art installations exhibited locally and internationally. These include Oupa Sibeko's 'Black is Blue' (2022) and several Ovation Award-winning productions on the South African National Arts Festival Fringe, including 'Fabric of the Universe' (2016) and 'What Falling Feels Like' (2020; 2023).

He holds a BA in Drama and Ethnomusicology from Rhodes University and an Honours degree in African Musicology from the University of Cape Town. His Honours research focused on the revival of Xhosa musical bows in urban settings, and he recently contributed an article on the subject to the 2025 edition of the Music In Africa Foundation’s Instrument Building and Repair: VIBRATIONS Exhibition.