It can’t be an English name – Exciting new voices

Kujenga, Jazz.
Venue: Diocesan School for Girls
Next Performance: Thursday 3 July 17:00
Preview
By Benevolence Mazhinji.

To spend time in conversation with the soulful band, Kujenga, is to sense immediately that their music is the most audible version of the spiritual power that music has to ground us in our identities. The name Kujenga means “to build” in Swahili, and this emerges as a declaration of intent as much as it is a refusal to couch their aspirations in a language that never belonged to them and is not capacious enough to hold their grief, their politics or their collective tenderness.

The Cape Town-based band arrives at the Black Power Station with Listen to the Kids to offer us an experience of music that remembers the names and stories so often left behind, and that insists, with unshakable grace, that the future of jazz is already here if we are willing to listen. Formed in 2017 by twin brothers Owethu and Zwide Ndwandwe alongside guitarist Thane Smith, Kujenga began as a quartet shaped by gospel roots and late-night rehearsals, before expanding in 2021 into the brimming, horn-rich ensemble that has since become one of the most vital voices in South African jazz.

More than anything, Kujenga hopes their music will leave behind a space where Black South Africans can exist freely, spiritually, and without apology, a space where younger musicians feel courageous enough to carry forward this vision. They dream of a future in which music is no longer treated as a commodity but as a form of collective memory and a catalyst for connection. In times that so often insist on borders of nation, genre and language, their work reminds us that music, when created with this much care, can become a way of building not only songs but a more just and loving world.