Nduduzo Makhathini returns to Cape Town jazz festival stage, while unveiling bold G-Star RAW collaboration

As Cape Town vibrates with anticipation ahead of the 2025 International Jazz Festival, the city isn’t just preparing for another musical gathering, it’s bracing for a celebration of heritage, evolution, and creative dialogue. South African jazz, long a force of resistance and renewal, is once again in the spotlight. At the heart of this movement is one of the country’s most celebrated jazz artists, whose journey from sharing stages with legends like Zim Ngqawana and Feya Faku to leading genre-bending collaborations speaks volumes about jazz's boundless potential.

In this candid conversation, Nduduzo Makhathini reflects on jazz as protest and communion, the genre’s resonance in post-colonial South Africa, and what it means to share the stage with house music titan Black Coffee. We also explore the intersections of music and fashion, the spirit of collaboration, and the power of visual identity as a form of storytelling. From unforgettable performances to a bold new partnership with G-Star, this is a moment not just of artistic visibility, but of cultural vision.

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What to wear to the Cape Town International Jazz Festival

Cape Town is buzzing with energy ahead of this year’s International Jazz Festival. How are you feeling during this moment especially with so much attention on South African jazz and its evolution?

I am very excited to share the music always. I have a special place in my heart for this festival. I started playing here many years ago with the greats such as Bab’uZim Ngqawana, Feya Faku and Herbie Tsoaeli among others. In the last 10 years at least, I have been playing the festival as a band leader. Fundamentally, jazz as an art-form is about co-existing and how we share space. But jazz is also protest music and I think the current focus on this music in South Africa, and elsewhere, is part of responding to questions of post coloniality, post slavery and post apartheid. There is a huge insurgence around the peculiarity of memory in former colonial zones such as South Africa and this music is instrumental in helping us deal with that.

You’ll be sharing the stage with Black Coffee, an icon in his own right but from a very different musical world. What does this intersection of genres and audiences mean to you as a jazz musician?

I think before our genres of specialisation, Black Coffee and I are lovers of good music in abroad sense. We also have similar backgrounds in jazz training from our early days at Technikon Natal, although we formed part of different generations. So the intersection is very effortless to us, it is just a way of listening to one another and sharing space. Although this will be our first concert as a duo, we have done a lot of collaborative work before starting with Music is King (2018). The album in itself troubles the notion of genre, at least from it conventional sense. In short, I would argue that our upcoming concert builds from this record, conceptually.

Your performance at the 2024 Jazz Festival was unforgettable for many, what stood out for you personally about that experience?

That concert was incredible; there was a deep sense intuitiveness. The band had been on tour for months and so there was a great deal of trust. What really stood out for me and of course the audiences, was Omagugu’s voice. She brought so much to the concert.

Jazz and house may seem worlds apart, yet both speak through rhythm, soul, and memory. Do you see space for deeper creative conversations between these genres and do collaborations like this one with G-Star allow for that kind of cultural dialogue? Why was now the right time to express yourself through fashion?

Collaboration is the future, and the mix of jazz and house is not an exception from this truth. In fact, from an African standpoint, collaboration is the essence of being. When people collaborate, they are basically saying to each other: “I see you”. Similarly, this is what I feel with the collaboration with G-Star suggests. I always loved fashion and so this collaboration feels really natural for me.

G-Star is known for working with bold, boundary-pushing individuals who redefine culture through style. How did you approach curating your own visual identity through this collaboration?

My work has always been about stretching the confines

As someone whose work is deeply intentional, how do you view clothing as a form of storytelling? And how does G-Star’s design philosophy of craftsmanship and authenticity reflect your own creative values?

I’m constantly referring African concepts to make sense of all of these things. For instance, where I grew (and even broadly speaking) people dressed up for all events as part of honouring the invitation. It is also believed that certain costumes contribute to the vibrational depth of a given ritual ceremony, hence there are selected patterns, fabrics, designs and colours associated with specific ceremonies. I guess that is the connection, the telling of stories.

This collaboration marks a shift in how audiences experience you not just through sound, but through presence, form, and styling. How would you define your aesthetic in this moment?

Luckily, my fashion and artistic practice have always been intertwined and audiences have always experienced me in some kind of totality that brought music, thought and fashion together. In regard to my aesthetic, I find it to be to be extremely ‘fugitive’ in that it responds to my creativity. I would imagine that it lives somewhere in the realms of improvisation which means that it responds spontaneously to time and space; it is an evolving aesthetic.

From your past creative partnerships with artists like Thandiswa Mazwai, to moments of introspection in your solo work - what makes a collaboration feel meaningful and authentic to you?

Collaboration is a way of realising wholeness; it is a way of being. We are born as a result of collaboration, thus something deep in our core yearns the collective. We are like members of an orchestra who work tirelessly on their individual parts but their melodies reach their fullest potential when the entire orchestra gets together and start playing.

G-Star has always worked with icons who embody individuality from Burna Boy to Magnus Carlsen. What do you hope your partnership communicates to audiences about what fashion can mean for African artists?

Fashion is a huge part of every successful artist, one’s fashion sense decides how one is perceived. I feel that this collaboration is going take my fashion to the next level thus allowing my brand to grow to even greater heights. I’m excited for the journey ahead. Essentially, it is my hope that the collaboration amplifies my artistic vision allowing me to tell more African stories while allowing the G-Star brand to show up beyond its normative narrative spaces.