Kujenga: South Africa’s New Generation of Jazz

Picture this: an event held at a studio space located on Albert Road in Woodstock, Cape Town. It's a sold-out show, packed with people in every direction. The audience, some of the city's greatest talent around: from DJs to fine artists, book editors, photographers, graf writers — the whole lot. Young and old alike, students and working-age folk. The hippest in the city are gathered in time, sharing a vibe at the start of May 2023, which marks the beginning of winter months in the Southern Hemisphere. It's a rainy night that is in line with how the city normally behaves around that time of the year.

The bands billed to perform, under the orchestration of renowned street artist Breeze Yoko, who also doubles as the host for the auspicious occasion, are The Brother Moves On and Kujenga. The former, a Johannesburg-based performance art ensemble that gained a dedicated following more than a decade prior while on tour in the city; and the latter, the freshest crew in town, poised to become one of them ones when it's all said, done, and the annals of history are being authored.

This meeting is significant, a passing of the baton, a nod from the old to the new, an initiation, a moment. That a city like Cape Town, better known for how divided it is by its own politics, came together to support its own.

The audience all smiles at The Brother Moves On and Kujenga’s Cape Town show in May 2023. Photo by Tšeliso Monaheng.

"This is what I think about when I think about Kujenga: it's a grassroots movement, a grassroots initiative. It's not so much a band and an ensemble of musicians, " says Zwide Ndwandwe, bassist, composer and co-founder of the fast-rising collective that has been splitting heads in and out of their city for close to two years.

However, their story stretches back to 2017 when "four young boys...who loved music" decided to stop doing pop covers and start a band. With immediate family and a small circle of friends as their audience, they went about figuring it out the true school way, by gigging at every spot that would accommodate them.

"We weren't really connected to the jazz/improvised music fraternity in the city. We come from a suburb known as Milnerton/Table View. There's no scene there — there's hardly any music. And if it is music, it's probably rock," he continues.

Milnerton is off-grid. It's neither the Northern or Southern suburbs, nor does it form a part of the Cape Flats, all areas that are known for producing some of the best talent in the city. These areas have the academies, the churches, the schools, the households that contain the steadfast musical artillery, and the connections to fast-track talented kids' careers. Importantly, says Zwide, "We also didn't study at UCT (University of Cape Town), which is [one of] the biggest institutions in terms of producing — at least in this country, contemporary-wise — jazz talent."

The Jazz and Performance program at UCT’s South African College of Music has produced some of the brightest luminaries who are pushing the sound forward in the country. The likes of pianists Thandi Ntuli and Bokani Dyer, bassists Benjamin Jephta and Shane Cooper, vocalists Spha Mdlalose and Zoe Modiga, and many more know all too well the institution's corridors.

Kujenga - Hymn For Hani (Live at Concept Records)youtu.be

"The first Kujenga gig was for my Technikon; I went to [Cape Peninsula University of Technology], and the media department was hosting a year-end thing. My lecturers knew that even though I was studying [public relations], I was a musician," says Ndwandwe, essentially highlighting that theirs wasn't a pre-arranged path where all the connections came ready-made.

"The building of a [music] community happened when my brother started coming with original music. He'd be like, 'Let's play this song that I just wrote,' and we'd be like, 'Yeah, let's hear it.'"

Ndwandwe would go around town "looking at different things," he continues. "When I knew that we were onto something was when we found a hotel called Granddaddy Hotel. I asked them, 'Hey, do you guys need musicians?'"

His idea was for the band to play First Thursday gigs. The person he met agreed, and suggested their rooftop for such occasions. Those gigs started off with family and friends, who then brought their own people, which is how the cipher expanded. Their debut album Nationality (2019) happened off the back of these sessions. What would've transpired after that, one will never know, because the world was sent into a lockdown that spanned two years, give or take.

"That community built up, fortunately, into something much larger than we thought it would be the moment we came back and still kept it consistent with the shows. But now we were coming out with music that was augmented by the horn section. I think there was a maturity that we went through that really helped [grow] the community. Everything that we did came from our pockets, from our gigs. And everything that we've done is just through our friends: from the ones who'd help us with press photos, to those that helped us shoot videos, take clips at shows, design our posters, and help us when we need someone to sell tickets at the shows," he says.

Currently, the horn section consists of Tamsyn Freeks on trombone, Bonga Mosola on trumpet, and Matthew Rightford on saxophone. The formation is completed by Owethu Ndwandwe on keys, Thane Smith on guitar, and Keno Carelse on drums.

Whether this grassroots operation will continue uninterrupted as they grow bigger remains to be seen.

For now, a new album that's been two years in the making is ready for the world. It's titled In The Wake, and it poses the question of "what has it meant to live through the devastations of a pandemic along with the disasters that preceded it, and the doom that has followed it?"

"Because we've been working on this for so long, I was kind of just looking forward to having this shit come out. Sometimes the relationship you have with your creation is a complicated one, and it only gets more complicated by time. I knew that [this] was something I loved making, and it was something I can't wait for people to hear. I just was frustrated that it was taking so long to complete, because I felt like we were gonna miss a window of opportunity by not putting it out as early as I thought it should've come out," Ndwandwe says.

But the adage “what's yours will wait for you” might prove true in Kujenga's case. They are in a better position to reap the rewards of whatever this next phase carries.

That special night in May 2023 was repeated when Kujenga visited The Brother Moves On on home turf during their two-city tour in December. It was a celebration of The Brother Moves On's epic A New Myth turning ten, and it took place at the Market Photo Workshop's open-air auditorium, under the starless night of Jozi's light-polluted skies. Located in the storied precinct of Newtown, the Market Photo's contribution to the visual history of South Africa can't be overstated. It's here, in front of a dedicated legion of The Brother Moves On fans, some of whom had never seen these new kids in action, that another bread-breaking, baton-passing moment occurred.

LIBRARY JAMS EPISODE 16 : THE BROTHER MOVES ONyoutu.be