by Vusumzi Nkomo
CAPE TOWN: I met up with a jazz band, on the aftermath of a physically and emotionally demanding
CTIJF19. A tight pact. Tight, in every sense of the word.
A few hours earlier we had been denied entry (euphemism for being “bounced”) to the Jazz Fest’s
after-party (a party quite similar to the ones your mom warned you about). So we were to meet in
the following afternoon at Young Blood Gallery before their sound-check, to get to know one
another and hopefully mend each other’s obliterated egos.
The meeting had the energy of a stolen interview in the dingy dark backdoor alleys of the ungodly
bohemian fringes of civil society where the metal din is loud enough to blow the stars away, where
semi-clad cool coke-snorting 20-something-something year-olds gather to waste their lives away for
good ol’ debauchery, and good ol’ fuck-sake. Jokes.
We sat on a stairway on Bree Street like pupils gathered to roll something extremely illegal. It turned
out I was in the company of the coolest young talented-budding musicians intent on waking up
Mandela’s Rainbow Nation from the dearth of innovation, slap us out of a general creative slumber.
A friend of theirs, a young white lady, friendlier to Owethu than everyone else, sat there, cool and
composed, and hardly said a thing.
Owethu Ndwandwe. Thane Smith. Zwide Ndwandwe. Riley van der Merwe. These names make up
the band.
Kujenga.
Riley plays a beat/drums, a skeleton really. Zwide: “You’re hearing funk? I’m hearing afro-beat!”
Riley replies; “I just came up with the song”. “I’ve got like four songs . . . ”, Thane jumps in. As if I’m
not there! And then Zwide politely turns, “sorry man.” “I get that a lot”, I interject to rescue him
from feeling sorry.
The most important question of the interview, “So who’s like the Beyonce of the group?”, was
answered with the humour it deserved: “Riley,” said Zwide. “He’s the prettiest one but he doesn’t
have clout!”
Honestly, he added, “there’s no one Beyonce, we’re all Beyonces. Because for there to be one
Beyonce there needs to be a Kelly and Michelle and I don’t think anyone wants to be. . .”
we’re creators of our own sound
And yes they have nothing in common with Destiny’s Child. They are Kujenga. Owethu explains: “the
name. . .this idea literally just came out of nowhere. As a cool and out-of-the-norm band, we wanted
to have an out-of-the-norm name. There’s no real significance. But it is Swahili for the word ‘create’.
Choosing that name does complement our style. We’re not just people who play, we’re creators of
our own sound.”
Though none of them speaks Swahili, the naming of the band does point to a particular political
intention: an (un/intentional?) attempt to lay the foundation as Kujenga tries to become an intra-
continental & diasporic exploration of African music. After all, these are the same lads who, as they
inform me, used to play as backing band for the Kenyan artist Silas Miami.
The genesis. . .
In the beginning, that is to say 2016, they were playing together, with Riley and Thane in a school as
well as church bands. It was the “connection and chemistry”, as Thane puts it, that ‘sealed the
(proverbial) deal’. They spent the first year trying to score gigs in the Mother City, doing “church
gigs, and a lot of church gigs,” says Zwide.
“We were doing a lot of covers when we were starting out. Only covers. That was from 2017 up until
as recently as May 2018; the first 5 months were just covers, covers, covers.” They then decided to
try some songs penned by Owethu, before Thane stepped up and proved to be a prolific writer too.
The evolution was moving; from covers to putting together a set with just their songs.
Our sound is Kujenga
Like yet another moment within the Black radical aesthetic tradition, their sound refuses shallow
categories, which is to say, confinement, to pre-set pigeon-holes, and as Riley asserts, “we kinda
have our own sound as Kujenga. We can’t be defined by a specific genre. Our sound is Kujenga.”
“And it happened as we were growing as well. The gigs started coming more recently. We were in
the espAfrica young legends competition. We made it to the top 10 but during that whole run we
were able to promote ourselves and get people to recognise us. It also gave us the momentum to
get more gigs,” continued Zwide. They approached Redbull who agreed to help them record their
music instead of only playing it live.
As a young band they’ve also had to contend with the threat posed by the capitalist matrix on live
music; the threat is the imminent-looming possibility of closure faced by live music venues. Zwide
says “it started when ‘straight no chaser’ closed down. That was trash. They closed down Mahogany,
close to Roeland Street, in Buitenkant.” Their favourite spot was the now-shut student-frequented
jazz joint, the late Great Wizoo in Rosebank: “that was heavy for us because we used to check that
out quite a bit just after we finished school and it became a haven for us,” laments Zwide. He
mentions that, apparently, it was shut because the philistine neighbours didn’t approve of the
nagging noise.
Riley mentions mournfully, “if you look for a live music venue, say a jazz lounge, for young people,
you struggle to find any, even in town.”
They seem to share the same sentiment; the grandest loss was the closure of Orbit in Jozi. Like the
fall of a giant, when Orbit closed its tremor was felt by young musicians a thousand kilometres away.
“I mean it’s been a dream to go there, not even perform, just to go there. So when they closed down
that was heart-breaking. . . I was on twitter when they announced that they were doing those
‘gofundmes’’, like ‘help us keep our doors open’, and I knew that was the beginning of the end when
you could see they’re not reaching their goal.”
Alternative? And all its possibilities. . .
There are online platforms where live music is thriving, Owethu suggests, but “they are not here so it
kinda pushes us to create our own channels as well.” He says that people are realizing that they
need to start doing their own things, and online shows is one of them.
Doing shows abroad is also something that they would love and maybe, just maybe, tour with
Owethu’s ‘fave’, Bra Nduduzo Makhathini. And Zwide mentions ‘Late Antique’, who he describes as
“the best band in the country”.
There are online platforms where live music is thriving
Whether Kujenga is a jazz band or not (Zwide admits that they are a jazz band, but says he does so
“reluctantly”) is less important and I couldn’t care less. What I do know is they have something quite
special brewing in their hearts; Kujenga, the world is yours!
Check Kujenga SA on the following social media pages:
@kujengalivesa - Instagram
@KujengaLiveSA - Twitter
Kujenga - Facebook
Here is the link to their debut single ‘Lost with You’