ALL THAT JAZZ

WORLD-CLASS musicians rocked Kapenaars and gave them a weekend to remember at the 2025 Cape Town International Jazz Festival (CTIJF). 

Drawing around 24 000 music lovers across three incredible days, the festivities kicked off with a vibrant free concert in the City Centre on 24 April, followed by two electrifying days of performances at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on 25 and 26 April.

The free concert left audiences thrilled with performances by The Ploemies, DJ Eazy, Cape Town-raised singer-songwriter Hannah Ray, the dynamic Andrea Fortuin, iconic Kwaito group TKZee, British acid jazz pioneers Incognito, and sensational singer Fancy Galada.

The festival itself, affectionately known as Africa’s Grandest Gathering, reaffirmed its place as one of the continent’s premier music events, attracting a dynamic, youthful, and diverse crowd from across South Africa and from as far afield as Europe, the UK and the US.

Friday night saw mense jolling to the beats and smooth sounds of Jamaican-American multi-instrumentalist Masego, before Grammy-winning DJ Black Coffee teamed with Ndunduzo Makhathini to deliver a performance like no other. 

Bringing together dance and jazz, the place was rukking with mense losing themselves in the music.

The night was capped off with TKZee pulling out their classic late-1990s hits, giving the people just what they wanted - more dancing. 

SA’s high priestess of jazz, Thandiswa Mazwai delivered an emotional performance on the struggle for freedom on Saturday night.

Inspired by Mzansi’s struggle icons - from apartheid activists to protesting students in the Fees Must Fall movement, Mazwai spread her power from the stage.

Joining in that tradition was trombonist Malcolm Jinyai, who had people out of their seats with his anti-GBV-inspired blasts and later had mense doing the Bartman with a Sophiatown-type stomper. 

Sultry American R&B superstar Ari Lennox brought the house down with her sexy feminine power with hits like Waste My Time and Soft Girl Era. 

One festivalgoer, Brathew van Schalkwyk, 27, said: “You get inspired going to things like this, and that's kind of been the whole thing with the CTIJF.

“It's just so much fun to be at this festival and be inspired by all the music.”