On Friday night at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, I witnessed one of the saddest moments ever in my long history of following music. I also witnessed one of the most joyous moments a few hours later.
The sad moment was watching legendary jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim performing in Cape Town for what will surely be the last time. It was sad to see his frail 91-year-old body being brought onto the Rosie’s stage in a wheelchair. It looked like his body has been broken by old age. It was sad because I remember how fit and healthy Ibrahim was not too long ago, a result of his training in Japanese martial arts.
The same could not said about his hands, as he moved smoothly through snippets from some of the vast repertoire of songs he recorded over the past seven decades or so.
He received three standing ovations, and deservedly so: when he entered the hall, when he finished his 30-minute solo piano piece, and when he completed his 15-minute encore with a short reading and a chant, which he delivered without using amplification. But the entire hall could hear what he said, and if you couldn’t hear it, you could feel it. It felt like he was saying goodbye.
I cried throughout the entire performance. I used to work closely with Ibrahim at some point and I know that his biggest regret in life has always been the fact that he felt that he was not respected by audiences in his hometown. The crowd who filled Rosie’s on Friday night put all of that to rest and indicated to Ibrahim that he had, at the age of 91, achieved something that he had struggled to achieve his whole life.
This was the closest he would come to receiving flowers in his lifetime and not only at his funeral, as the case when most musicians, and people in general, pass away.
The joyous moment came shortly afterwards when we joined thousands of festivalgoers in the biggest venue, Kippie’s, for a performance by British artist, Jacob Collier, who has won several Grammy Awards for his music. His was a solo performance with a difference, with him effortlessly floating between guitar, piano, bass guitar and other instruments, as well as audience interaction. The sound of several thousand people singing along to the South African national anthem is always special, as it was when led by Collier. Yes, he brought on a few guests, but for most of the time, he was on stage by himself. Collier’s infectious energy could be felt throughout the crowd, and they responded in kind. This was just one of the performances that gave me hope for the future.
Festivals of any nature can be strange beasts. There are people who criticise the jazz festival for not being jazzy enough. Yet, they have no answer when you ask them how you grow festival audiences if you play only strict jazz. The audience last week was probably the most diverse and youngest that I have ever seen. This is a good sign and shows that the festival is investing in growing future audiences and not just resting on it laurels and depending on an ageing audience, many of whom are dying out.
We have been to every single festival since it began as the North Sea Jazz Festival in 2000, and we normally stick to the serious jazz, but decided to test different genres this year. So, we watched snippets of or, in some cases, the full performances of Sipho ‘Hotstix’ Mabuse, the Yellowjackets, the CTIJF Jazz Orchestra (consisting of mainly young people), BCUC, Sio, Tutu Puoane, Justin-Lee Schultz, Raveena, Sheila E and the E-Train, Seba Kaapstad and The Yussef Dayes Experience. There are many others that we regret not seeing.
There are people who complain about the Jazz Festival every year. Some complain about the ticket prices, others about logistics, and many complain about the sound. This year, when it comes to ticket prices, they had more to complain about the South African leg of the Montreux Jaff Festival that made its debut in Franschhoek on the same weekend as the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, which cost more than double for one stage only. In Cape Town, your money brought you access to four stages. Logistics will always be an issue, but I noticed how, with the access to the Rosie’s and Moses Molelekwa stages, the security changed plans quickly when they realised that what they were doing was not working. In general, I thought the sound was much better in all the venues. But this was my experience, and I am mindful that others might have had a different experience.
While the CTIJF started off sadly for us with the Abdullah Ibrahim performance, it ended hopeful about the future of jazz as well as the jazz festival.
(First published on this website on Wednesday, 1 April 2026)
