National Youth Jazz Festival, Makhanda

National Youth Jazz Festival, Makhanda A barometer of South African jazz. 29 June - 4 July 2026.

About The Festival

The National Youth Jazz Festival has become one of the most significant jazz development programmes in the country, annually bringing together over 300 students and 40 teachers from diverse backgrounds all over South Africa, with nearly 60 professional jazz musicians and educators. The festival lasts nearly a week, incorporating innovative jazz performance, rehearsals, workshop

s, lectures, networking and an opportunity for South Africa’s future jazz stars to interact personally and musically with their peers and the country’s top performers. The NYJF has hosted most of South Africa’s leading jazz musicians over the past 16 years, as well as musicians and teachers from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Britain, Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Mexico, Mozambique, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, the US and Zimbabwe. The top jazz students in South Africa audition for places in the National Schools Jazz Band and the National Youth Jazz Band (NYJB) and these national bands are conducted by some of South Africa’s leading jazz educators and performers. The NYJB performs regularly at major festivals around South Africa - Grahamstown, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban - and has performed in New York, Sweden and the North Sea Jazz Festival, The Netherlands. The philosophy of the NYJF is to promote the development of jazz in South African by providing vibrant, excellent educational opportunities for young players; by encouraging artistic integrity and creativity on the world-class Main Jazz Stage; by acknowledging our country’s jazz heritage; by creating a forum for South African musicians to network with peers from around the country and the world; and by providing audiences with unique, quality jazz.

From the archives: The National Schools Big Bands of 1999-2005! See if you can recognise a few faces that have been back...
03/07/2026

From the archives: The National Schools Big Bands of 1999-2005! See if you can recognise a few faces that have been back on our stage many times...

From the archives: The National Youth Jazz Band of 1995 - conducted by the late Dr Johnny Mekoa.
30/06/2026

From the archives: The National Youth Jazz Band of 1995 - conducted by the late Dr Johnny Mekoa.

While we unfortunately can't present the festival this year, we thought it would be a wonderful time to reflect on the h...
30/06/2026

While we unfortunately can't present the festival this year, we thought it would be a wonderful time to reflect on the history and legacy of all the wonderful people who have been involved in our festival over the years. First up - the oldest group photo we have on record, the group photo from 1995! Stay tuned over the next few days for a trip into our archives.

15/06/2026

We would like to acknowledge the enormous impact of Abdullah Ibrahim on the development and internationalisation of South African jazz. The sound that he developed is all around us in the musicians who have followed him and we owe him a great cultural debt! May he rest in peace.

24/05/2026

The National Youth Jazz Festival has taken the difficult decision not to stage the 2026 festival.

Given the current arts-funding landscape, we have been registering as a Public Benefit Organisation to broaden our funding eligibility and improve the festival's sustainability. The administrative and regulatory processes involved have taken longer than anticipated, and with final registration still unconfirmed, we cannot present a festival of the scale and quality our students, artists and audiences deserve.

We are very sad not to see you this year in Makhanda, and we apologise to the disappointed jazz community. However, we are certain that this is the right decision to ensure the long-term success of our festival.

The National Youth Jazz Festival has been one of the premier jazz development programmes in South Africa for over 30 years, promoting the growth of our jazz by celebrating our heritage, encouraging artistic integrity and creativity and providing a unique collaborative opportunity for jazz musicians from around SA and the world. Most importantly, hundreds of jazz students – our country’s cultural future – have annually had direct access to all of this for a week on the DSG campus.

Our aim is to ensure that alumni of the NYJF, and especially the national bands, continue to be prominent members of the SA jazz community well into the future.

We'll be ready for you in June 2027!

Catch the National Youth Jazz Band conducted by Sisonke Xonti live in Joburg tomorrow night at UntitledBasement!Tickets:...
17/11/2025

Catch the National Youth Jazz Band conducted by Sisonke Xonti live in Joburg tomorrow night at UntitledBasement!

Tickets: https://qkt.io/G4nkjK

15/11/2025

The National Schools Jazz Band 2025 performing Spring - live at the National Youth Jazz Festival, Makhanda, 2025.

The National Schools Jazz Band (NSJB) is a carefully-selected ensemble of the top school jazz musicians in the country. Applicants are put through a series of online and in-person auditions until only 8 or 9 top-tier players remain.

The band is directed this year by Ramon Alexander, a pianist from Mamre who has performed at numerous venues and festivals around the world and whose own music is a landscape of rhythmic interplay that showcases his legacy and heritage with the influences of Moravian hymns and the surviving legacy of Khoisan music. He is a senior lecturer in Jazz at Stellenbosch University.

Spring written by Chris Schilder.

Musicians:
Guitar - Ebenezer Mitewu
Piano - Sandla Twenani
Bass - Eyo Nzazi
Drums - Caleb Dlamini
Voice - James Ford
Trumpet - Siyamthanda Dlamini
Alto - Mholi Malinga
Tenor - Franco Von Wielligh
Trombone - Oluhle Rafuza

Sound by:
Les van der Veen (head sound engineer)
Adriaan Wessels (mix)
Izan Greyling
Nick Smuts

Video by:
Leila Kidson
Joshua Smuts

The NYJB is on the road again! The National Youth Jazz Band will be performing in the Sandton Convention Centre on Wedne...
15/11/2025

The NYJB is on the road again! The National Youth Jazz Band will be performing in the Sandton Convention Centre on Wednesday 19 November as part of the G20 meetings, courtesy of FirstRand Foundation.

You can catch their public performance the night before at Untitled Basement on Tuesday 18th. It’s a really killer band of young players, conducted by Sisonke Xonti.

Ticket link will be shared soon.

Address

Diocesan School For Girls
Grahamstown

Website

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