Shekhinah's Rosefest and the Rise of South African R&B

It's three months before her independent festival, Rosefest, and Shekhinah is feeling the pressure. Twice the size of the last one, this year's iteration will feature the cream of the crop in the South African R&B world — Thando Zide, Elaine, Nanette and Simmy are but some of the incredible women on the line-up. She's been keeping her ear to the ground, hearing people's comments about the music — mostly that it's disregarded by promoters who don't understand what the artists are saying, and who therefore don't include them when R&B-aligned artists from elsewhere tour the country.

A month from our chat, Spotify will publish statistics about South African R&B that vindicate the artist and the gamble she's taking. South Africans spent more than 8.5 billion minutes streaming R&B in 2025, the equivalent of over 142 million hours. Listeners aged 18 to 24 account for 40.9% of the genre's streams in the country, with those aged 25 to 29 making up a further 18.7%. Tyla, whose album A*POP just got released, leads the platform's list of most-streamed local R&B artists, followed by Sondae, Lloyiso, Elaine and Jordan G Welch. There is an apparent refusal to look at these numbers and allow them to translate into opportunities for the artists.

"I think there was a lot of conversation around the Ella Mai show, where it was like, the lineup is not R&B, but the headline is R&B. And everyone was like, well, R&B artists don't pull numbers. And I felt like that's crazy, because we sold out our show last year, and our show was a majority of R&B artists," says Shekhinah.

"I think with your [Once Upon a Time in Joburg] audience, as much as they're paying to see the international act, they're also very vocal and present about the local acts, and they have such an appreciation for the locals. And you know what? It's not just R&B; it's also your neo-soul, like your Lia Butlers or your Thando Zides or your Mananas or Lloyiso. Lloyiso is always selling out shows."

Rosefest's inaugural edition was in 2019 — staged twice that year, first in Johannesburg and then in Durban. When the pandemic hit in 2020, Shekhinah and her team took the festival online as a streamed digital experience. Last year's edition, held at the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Garden, was its fourth by the festival's own count. Initially an extension of her earth-shattering debut album, Rose Gold, the festival was designed to challenge the industry's gender imbalance by providing a platform for women artists, DJs, producers, and creatives.

Elaine returns to the festival for the third time this year, and brings the story of a debut that helped define the current trajectory of the music in South Africa. When the seven-track Elements came out, Shekhinah was the only one making a real dent — buoyed by the runaway success of "Back To The Beach," which then carried into the album. Now, artists like Lordkez are on mainstream radio all day, every day, and Tyla is the biggest star in the world, due in part to the R&B roots that she's able to stretch into the pop format and beyond.

"I dropped [Elements] on a Sunday; I uploaded it to Distrokid myself. I had lectures the following Monday, and I was upset because I got the release timing wrong. I was a bit emotional, and I was writing an exam the next day, so I just decided to switch my phone off. When I walked into my lecture hall, everyone was just staring and pointing," recalls Elaine. She then turned on her phone to tell a friend about this awkward encounter. "The project was number one on the charts. I didn't even know what that meant. Then the guys from Apple Music were like, yo, we need you to come here immediately!"

She left her lecture right away, and the rest is history, with twists so magnificent they'll make for a great retelling to future generations. Elaine graduated in 2020 and signed to Columbia Records that August, almost a year after debuting. It was an admirable roster: Adele, Beyoncé, Pharrell, John Legend — she was swimming in it.

"There was a lot of learning that [the label] had to do: about a girl from South Africa making R&B - they didn't even know that a South African girl can make R&B like that. We made some amazing music together, but I was like, you know what, you guys have a lot to learn, I have a lot to learn," she says. "I also wasn't willing to wait for them to figure me out."

The Evolution of Rosefest

Rosefest is figuring it out year by year. By the time Shekhinah spoke to OkayAfrica, ticket sales were already higher than at the same point last year. Tickets officially sold out in July, forcing the organizers to extend capacity. Nanette, who recently put out the deluxe edition of 2025's Painfully Happy, is also on the Rosefest line-up. She reckons that South African R&B is the moment, and has said as much on her X account, where she shares thoughts about everything from identity politics to clear-eyed analyses of life in post-Apartheid South Africa.

"There's so many artists who are in the R&B space, and they're so consistent in the quality of their music and their sound. And I just thought that was something that deserved to be celebrated and spoken about. I really think R&B is the moment right now, because we've got so many diverse forms of R&B, and everybody is just contributing to the bigger picture of soul, which I think is really beautiful," she says.

In addition to their solo work, these three formidable women are renowned for their forays into dance music. Shekhinah's joint Afro-house EP with Brian Dhludhlu arrived a day after we spoke, something she did to break away from making an album ("because we're always making an album," she jokes) and demonstrate her range, which has also seen her jump on gqom beats by the likes of DJ Lag. Elaine's entry into the space was met with trepidation, something she reads as people projecting. Three years on from "All Night Long," which she did with Major League DJz and Yumbz, she's established an enviable footprint in the scene, and worked with respected producers like Kabza De Small, Sam Deep and JAZZWRLD, with whom she released "Vele Uyena" in 2025. "It didn't harm me; it actually brought me so much. [The song] changed my life in so many ways. And people were just like, don't do that, don't say anything, don't do [amapiano], don't do house, don't do this — why?" she wonders.

Nanette says her aim whenever she gets on electronic beats is to make people dance. "I'm really not trying to shove a lot of words down your throat, like, it's okay if I repeat a few things," she says.

These women are not waiting for permission: to make the music they want, to start the event properties they desire, to explore passions outside of music — passions that keep them coming back to their reasons for making it in the first place. And for Shekhinah, Rosefest was really about carving a space in an environment where all the boys had something — Nasty C with the Ivyson Tour, Cassper Nyovest with his Fill Up series, and AKA with the Supa Mega show.

"We don't have a million sponsors or whatever, but we have an audience. And as long as the audience is rocking with us and the audience is going to support us, we don't really care who's going to be there. And I think all the years that — well, not all the years, but the three years that we didn't do anything — was just us not trusting our audience. So now we trust our audience to say that we're having a show," she says.