It starts quietly: a few artists pulling their catalogues, a few more muttering about payouts and principles. But lately, the volume has risen. From Cape Town to Copenhagen, the whisper of “maybe I should leave Spotify” has turned into a full-blown chorus.
It makes sense that Champion Trees‘ latest releases feel more like autumn than spring, since they’re now singing to us from the northern hemisphere. Before most of the band moved to England in early 2023, the band had a breakout two years surrounding the release of their debut album, NOW 3000, in July 2022. We gave the album a warmly appreciative review back then, praising its Western Cape sentimentality and heartening undercurrents. It should be no surprise then that we were very excited by the release of four new singles in anticipation of a full album, “I Wear a Shirt That Says Australia” , “I Want to Sound Like a Ghost” , “Gentle, Apple, Balanced”, and “Cabbage Song”.
These days, too many events feel designed for people who drift in, snap a few photos, and leave before the night really begins. The music becomes background, the crowd thins by midnight, and the promise of connection gets lost somewhere between the bar and the DJ booth.
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.
A few years ago, landing a track on RapCaviar was akin to winning the lottery. Today, the same placement feels closer to a consolation prize. Streams are down, algorithms are up, and the machinery of music discovery is quietly being re-engineered while artists attempt to keep pace.
For a few hours on the evening of the first Thursday of September, Cape Town’s music scene witnessed a shift. When Aloe Aloe and Quiet Life Co staged Maglera Doe Boy alongside Kujenga, it wasn’t merely a show; it was history being written in real time.
By the time the last question was asked last Saturday afternoon, you could feel it: nobody wanted to leave. In a city where meaningful conversations about music often happen in snatched greenroom chats or late-night WhatsApp groups, VERVE’s latest workshop at Obz Books gave Cape Town’s creative community a rare chance to sit down together — artists, managers, journalists, and curious fans alike — and be heard.
It’s tempting to start this piece with “despite the odds” or “against the grain.” But let’s not. Because here’s the truth: femme-presenting artists in Cape Town and beyond aren’t breaking into the music scene — they’re helping build it. And if you’re not paying attention, you’re not just missing the moment. You’re missing the movement.
It was a simple question, but the answer sparked a storm. When DJ Speedsta asked Cape Town-born rapper K.Keed to freestyle live on his 5FM show, she refused with a calm but firm, “Let’s not do that.” Instead of letting the moment pass, Speedsta pressed her again — igniting a debate that has since spilled far beyond the studio walls.
The first thing I saw was a pink drink and a pile of scavenger hunt cards. Not the usual start to a Cape Town music launch, but Pretty Loud has no interest in doing things the usual way. On 7 August, co-founders Erin Elliot and Amy Tjasink — two women with the resumes and stage presence to back it up — introduced their new women-centred music collective with The Pyjama Party. Invite-only, unapologetically femme, and designed to feel like the sleepover of your dreams, it doubled as a statement of intent: the future of music in this city is collaborative, not competitive.
