The People Building South Africa’s Next Festival Culture

It's 10 a.m. on a Saturday in early December 2025, and bassist and composer Benjamin Jephta is fiddling with cables and talking his band through soundcheck. Later that evening, they'll perform at Umanyano Lwe Jazz (ULJ), leaving everything on the bandstand. South African jazz, whose new era he is partly responsible for ushering in, is alive and well, as the people in attendance will attest over the days and months that follow. Founder Zukiswa White is running around too, making sure her team is taken care of, that the seating order accommodates movement, that the catering is on track for when the gates open in a few hours. By early afternoon, all signs point toward a successful two days.

Joining Jephta on the first day's bill are Thandi Ntuli, with whom he’ll perform a duet of "Cosmic Light"; Afrika Mkhize, a rare sight but always a joy to witness; and saxophonist Linda Tshabalala, who also hardly performs but brings her forceful might every single time she does.

White and her team have been steady in the gym this year. Five years on from the 2021 gathering that started it all, they're leaner than ever, muscle showing through, guaranteed a steady footing through this year's event. So far they've announced Theo Parrish, Aja Monet, Tlokwe Sehume, Zoë Modiga, Buhlebendalo, Ndabo Zulu — and the list goes on.

"We're proud that we still get to do the thing we set out to," White tells OkayAfrica over text. "Five years later, we have affirmed for ourselves, and perhaps even others, that ideas can live. That Black cultural production deserves patient and long-term investment as (public cultural) infrastructure. That cultural work can do more than entertain: it can archive memory, inspire imagination and expand public participation through culture."

The learnings have been many, the lessons profound. Pulling off a two-day event on ULJ's scale is no small feat. It demands precision, the ability to improvise, and the open-mindedness to take criticism on the chin and act on it.

"Getting to the fifth-year milestone has meant that seeing ULJ through its first decade feels a lot less far-fetched. But I suppose that's just the math," she says.

Small-Scale Collectives Are Sustaining South Africa’s Live Music Scene

When we spoke last year, Vuyo McGlad and his crew were a few days short of the November edition of Kids Love Jazz (KLJ), the event property that has disproved the notion that young people don't engage with jazz, or aren't interested in starting. They've torn off the mask of pretension, shattered walls and expectations, and outdone themselves in the process.

This year they did the previously undone, taking the show on the road across 13 cities in Southern Africa, six of which sold out. More than 10,000 music lovers showed up, and 28 live acts and DJs were booked and busy. In Johannesburg, Youth Day resonated differently, soundtracked by the shrill of saxophones, the joy and presence of a jubilant youth, and the vast expanse of the city skyline to top it off. They were in Durban mere days later, doing the same as the city's warm weather stretched into the night and enveloped the somber sea and sky with new memories.

As McGlad attests, it was no easy feat, but he and the team pulled it off. "We partnered with four communities and [reached] three schools, all this with no sponsorships, just us [funding it]. It's been amazing. We learned so many things across all the cities."

ULJ and KLJ exist in the realm of possibility, where magic works, and wonders fill the atmosphere. It's to say that they did it, and also to show others how it's done, to share notes, to compare and contrast approaches.

"[It takes] a whole lot of grit, a delicate dance of trusting our gut and the proverbial process, an enormous amount of consistently believing in that which we do not yet see (faith!), and tons of tears every other second week or so," White admits.

"And still, it has taken two of ULJ's core team members — myself alongside ULJ's co-producer, Thato Thinyane — pursuing this ambition to build a world-class boutique festival experience full time for the first time ever, because growth in scale this year, per our 5-year plan, demanded it."

Speaking to this year's theme, ROOTED (f), she adds: "We have been working on putting [it together] since February. As we approach the 100-day countdown in a few days, we wish we had another six-month run because time simply flew! Seriously. It's been a lot. Tons of learning and even more reminders of our resourcefulness, our capacity to fall and pick ourselves up quickly, and quite frankly, how completely and fully we are so glad to be consumed by this one big-little thing."

Come December, scores of music lovers will descend on the expanded venue, Casalinga, a country restaurant and events estate on Rocky Ridge Road in Muldersdrift, north-west of Johannesburg, for two delightful days of live music.

Others are testing the same waters. In late July, the weekly event series Your Weekly Touch Up announced the inaugural Touch Up Fest.

"What we gained was obviously what we're gaining every week — building the community, the creative things we wish existed, building infrastructure for artists like us. That's what we were gaining. It became less about earning weekly, which is where we started," says Lwandile Nkanyuza of NORMVL, the artist agency that oversees Your Weekly Touch Up and affiliated experiences.

"We've had over 300 acts on our stage. It's three years doing this, 156 weeks. And it's like, okay, what's next? Every now and then you need something that will make you squirm, something that's a bit of a challenge. So the festival was a no-brainer as far as the next logical step: accommodating a larger audience, maybe going bigger on our curation, from three per night to something a little bit bigger."

"And now if we say, hey, we're doing a festival, and we're ticketing it, they're like, okay, you guys haven't let us down for 156 weeks as far as the curation goes. I think we can give you money for a festival, especially now that we're beyond bootstrapping, we're beyond self-funding. This needs a production; this needs sponsorship, maybe. And we have this beautiful proof of concept that is Your Weekly Touch Up," he concludes.

Large-scale festivals are downscaling. Rocking The Daisies, scheduled for October this year, announced it will no longer happen, while a string of others in recent times have not made a comeback. Small-scale, Black-owned and run festivals are keeping live music alive and growing their audiences in the process.