There is a particular kind of advice that gets handed to emerging artists in Cape Town when a brand finally comes knocking. Soften the edges. Be easier to work with. Make yourself more palatable. It is well-meaning, and it is almost always wrong.
There’s a particular kind of artist South African house music produces every few years. Not always the loudest in the room, nor the name pushed hardest on a lineup, but the kind whose presence feels inevitable in hindsight — as if the music has been preparing audiences for them long before the moment arrives.
For Sió, 2026 is shaping up as that year.
Cape Town loves music in a way that’s hard to argue with: you can feel it in the pockets of live performance that keep multiplying, in the crowds that show up when something is truly special, and in the sheer range of sounds that can exist in the same weekend. We’re a city of musicians, listeners, and cultural operators who know how to make something happen — even when conditions aren’t perfect.
It’s not easy to go back. Especially when “back” isn’t a place but a version of yourself you’ve outgrown. For bassist and composer Benjamin Jephta, revisiting his debut album ten years later wasn’t about nostalgia — it was about truth-telling. Homecoming Revisited, released on 19 September 2025, doesn’t try to reconstruct 2015. It listens to it from the other side of a decade — one that’s taken Jephta from the Cape Flats to Berklee, to stages around the world, and back to the South African jazz community that raised him.
In recent years, many musicians and fans have questioned whether jazz still carries the same political charge it once did. For Cape Town’s seven-piece collective Kujenga, those tensions pulse beneath every note of their new EP, Common Ground, a record that insists jazz — or what they call “Black Improvised Music” — still carries a responsibility to the times we live in.
Every album is “a triumph.” Every gig “an unforgettable night.” If you read most music journalism today, you’d be forgiven for thinking we’re living through a golden age of perfection. But we’re not—we’re just not being honest. Music journalism has gotten too soft, and it’s failing the very people it’s meant to serve.
Walk into the basement of The Athletic Club & Social any night from a Wednesday to a Saturday, and you’ll find a crowd that looks more like a Boiler Room audience than your grandpa’s jazz club. Young people hunched over Negronis, heads nodding, bodies swaying, fully locked in. This is jazz—but not as the world once knew it. This is jazz with an edge, a bounce, a future. Welcome to Cape Town: one of the new jazz capitals of Africa and the world that, frankly, has been carrying the spirit all along.
Newest single by Teagan, ‘Lock You Down’, hits like a ray of December sunshine—a track that somehow feels both deeply familiar and refreshingly original. The Cape Town-based singer-songwriter has found a sweet spot between glossy pop hooks and the airy, upbeat sensibilities of amapiano. This isn’t just another throwaway summer tune; it’s a layered piece that radiates confidence, underscored by warm percussion and a chorus that practically begs you to sing along while dancing barefoot under the sun.
Where indie meets psychedelic rock in the scenic Shambala Park on 7-8 December 2024, experience Helter Skelter, a weekend of raw soundscapes, trippy visuals, and eclectic energy just a beat away from Cape Town.
South Africa’s alternative music scene is heating up as FREDDY L embarks on their Mother’s Calling tour, which kicked off at the start of October. The Durban and Cape Town-based trio, known for blending pop and rock with local South African influences, is set to light up venues across Cape Town and Stellenbosch this month.