Kaya 959 The Jazz Standard

Simnikiwe Sondlo on The Jazz Standard With Brenda Sisane

Loading player...
Ahead of the Newtown heritage Jazz Festival we speak to Simnikiwe Sondlo, founder and owner of Niki's Oasis, a space where jazz is not only performed, but held, nurtured, and passed on.

This conversation speaks to that continuum: from legendary accompanists like Themba Mokoena, to contemporary voices like Tshepo Mngoma, to the institutions that make this music visible and audible.
18 Jan English South Africa Music History · Music Commentary

Other recent episodes

Kwanti Leeh! on The Jazz Standard With Brenda Sisane

Tribute, remembrance, lineage — these are not only international conversations. Here at home, musicians are also returning to the work of South African elders whose compositions continue to shape the sound of the present. The collective known as Kwanti Leeh! brings together Ayanda Sikade, Sisonke Xonti, Andile Yenana and Herbie…
8 Mar 27 min

Darren English on The Jazz Standard With Brenda Sisane

More than the accolades, Darren English is a storyteller. His music holds memory, migration, improvisation, and a deep sense of purpose. And in this episode we get to sit down and listen closely to Darren guiding us through the inspirations, the experiments, and the moments behind He Said, She Said…
1 Mar 23 min

Zama Phakathi on The Jazz Standard With Brenda Sisane

Zama Phakathi is a South African art researcher and curator whose work foregrounds African narratives, cultural memory and social agency through art and public-facing exhibitions. Based in Paris, Zama combines rigorous research with creative practice to challenge dominant art histories and uplift voices often marginalised in mainstream cultural spaces. Through…
18 Jan 12 min

Aruán Ortiz on The Jazz Standard With Brenda Sisane

A celebrated piano cubist, distinguished jazz improviser and idiosyncratic stylist, Ortiz combines intellectual depth, emotionality and creativity on his fourth solo piano album, arriving eight years after its predecessor, the much-lauded Cub(an)ism. Where that album offered an undiluted excursion into the crossroads of Cuban rhythms and Cubist abstraction, Créole Renaissance…
11 Jan 40 min

Asher Gamedze on The Jazz Standard With Brenda Sisane

We turn toward drummer, composer, thinker Asher Gamedze as he opens up his new project, A Semblance. A title that already resists certainty. A likeness. A trace. A suggestion of something once known — or perhaps something still becoming. With Asher, return is never simple. It is layered, political, spiritual…
22 Feb 29 min
All episodes