Standard Bank Joy Of Jazz

A nightclub owner's idea

The festival belongs to Peter Tladi, a promoter and artist manager who was born in Sharpeville, moved to Sebokeng in the Vaal Triangle and ran a nightclub there in the 1970s. He set up his artist management and promotions company, T-Musicman, in 1989, and it is through T-Musicman that Joy of Jazz is still produced. Speaking to TimesLIVE in October 2023, when he was 73, Tladi gave the name a plain origin: 'My wife and my PR guy who left came up with the name and it stuck. One of the things I know is that we want people to be happy and enjoy themselves.'

Standard Bank has attached its name to the event for long enough that the two are rarely separated in print. The bank's own newsroom puts the audience at over 25,000 a year, up from 1,800 in 2000. The edition count runs in step with that early figure: the 2023 festival was billed as the 24th, 2024 as the 25th, 2025 as the 26th, and the September 2026 weekend is the 27th. The day-to-day production is now fronted by producer Mantwa Chinoamadi, who is the named voice in the last two years of announcements.

Four stages under one roof

Since moving to the Sandton Convention Centre at 161 Maude Street, the festival has run as an indoor, multi-room event rather than an open-air one. Four stages run at once, each with a Sesotho or isiZulu name and a defined brief. Dinaledi is the large room for the marquee international and local sets. Diphala is programmed around vocalists and instrumentalists, with a deliberate tilt towards women bandleaders. Conga takes rhythm-driven and African-rooted music. Mbira is where jazz meets soul, neo-soul and spoken word.

The simultaneous programming is the defining experience of the weekend. Reviewing the 2023 edition for CityLife Arts, editor Edward Tsumele noted that with performances running in parallel it was 'difficult to choose which ones to watch'. In 2025 doors opened at 5pm and closed at 1am on all three nights, with performances starting at 6pm. Tickets are sold only through Ticketmaster, third-party resale is prohibited, Standard Bank cardholders get up to 15 per cent off on a maximum of two tickets, and the event is restricted to over-18s. Beyond the music, the weekend includes an artisan market, the Jazzy Joburg Market, which the sponsor says supports more than 25 small businesses each year.

Twenty-five years, then a third night

The 2023 edition ran on 29 and 30 September. Tsumele's review recorded Zonke Dikana filling the Mbira stage to standing room, Marcus Wyatt leading a band with two bassists, a trombonist and an additional horn, and a pairing of Big Zulu and Sjava that he found under-rehearsed, with the two men 'performing as if they were not performing in a collaborative gig'. He also praised the depth of support for local acts.

The 2024 festival, from 26 to 28 September, marked 25 years. An anniversary exhibition of photographs and archive material, curated by Dr Same Mdluli, ran on the third floor of the convention centre, with a second part displayed at Standard Bank's head office at 30 Baker Street in Rosebank. Photographer Siphiwe Mhlambi published a companion book, Rhythms in Black and White: A Virtual Journey Through the World of Jazz. Mdluli credited Tladi's 'visionary leadership' for the festival's survival.

In 2025 the organisers expanded to three full nights for the first time, from 26 to 28 September, with more than 60 musicians from 15 countries. Esperanza Spalding, Lakecia Benjamin, Thandi Ntuli and Steve Dyer's Vision of Ubuntu project took the Dinaledi stage. The Baylor Project, the Hakan Basar Trio, Peter Auret and Kyle Shepherd played Diphala. Oumou Sangaré, Meshell Ndegeocello, Gabi Motuba and Nduduzo Makhathini were on Conga, while José James's Badu project and Amanda Black anchored Mbira. Wynton Marsalis also appeared. Day passes cost R1,350, a two-day pass R2,250, the full weekend R3,250, and a single-day hospitality package R9,995. Announcing the line-up on 30 April 2025, Standard Bank's Yolisa Koza spoke of 'over 40 years of championing the arts', and Chinoamadi said the producers were 'excited about where younger musicians are taking the music'.

2026: back to two nights, and the elders

The 27th edition was announced on 30 April 2026 and returns to a two-night format on Friday 25 and Saturday 26 September. The Mail & Guardian's Kibo Ngowi read the programme as a festival leaning into legacy, and the tributes bear that out. Thandiswa Mazwai will perform a set honouring Hugh Masekela; she said the tribute was 'deeply personal' because his music 'shaped not just jazz, but the spirit of this country'. Khaya Mahlangu leads a tribute to the saxophonist Kippie Moeketsi on Dinaledi. Buhlebendalo Mda, Zawadi YaMungu and Xolisa Dlamini celebrate Busi Mhlongo on Mbira. Themba and Afrika Mkhize present a Reflections of Mzansi Big Band. The programme is also pinned to two anniversaries falling in 2026: 50 years since the Soweto Uprising of 1976 and 70 years since the 1956 Women's March.

The international names are Angélique Kidjo and Kamasi Washington, the latter making his first Joy of Jazz appearance, plus the Lebanese-French trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf, British saxophonist Nubya Garcia, British-Nigerian singer Ola Onabule, New Orleans band Tank and the Bangas and the reunited duo Floetry. On Dinaledi they are joined by McCoy Mrubata, Judith Sephuma and Dumza Maswana. Diphala carries Garcia, Gabi Motuba, Lorraine Klaasen and a commissioned project called 4 Bass Lines, with bassists AusTebza, Rochelle Rautenbach, Chantal Willie-Petersen and Orlanda Da Conceição, which Chinoamadi described as celebrating women in jazz 'not as supporting acts, but as architects of sound'. Conga has Tank and the Bangas, Reza Khota, Madala Kunene, Sibusile Xaba, Sydney Mavundla, Tumi Mogorosi, Soweto Kinch and Ndabo Zulu's Umgidi Ensemble. Mbira has Floetry, Nomfusi, Anaïs Rosso, Internet Athi, Gurulogic and Manana. Motuba and Manana are the 2026 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winners for jazz and music respectively.

Ticket prices came down with the shorter run: R1,150 for a single night and R2,250 for both, again through Ticketmaster with the cardholder discount. Standard Bank's head of group sponsorship, Bonga Sebesho, said the festival 'consistently presents the truest and most authentic jazz programming on the continent'. The bank's own economic case, published alongside the line-up, claims over R34.5 million in direct spending, around R86 million for the Gauteng economy and more than 1,200 temporary and permanent jobs. Those are sponsor figures rather than independent ones.

What the room is like

The most useful account of a recent edition is Tsumele's report on the 2025 weekend, published on 29 September 2025. He arrived on the Friday to find shorter queues than usual and assumed the economy had kept people at home. He was wrong: 'the performances were almost 100 percent full, and in some cases leaving no room to sit as the seats were all taken.' His favourite act was Wynton Marsalis, but his central observation was that the South African headliners drew rooms of the same size. Amanda Black and Thandi Ntuli pulled crowds comparable to the visiting Americans, and he described Nduduzo Makhathini's playing as 'always elegant, top class'. His one complaint was a bouncer who initially refused him entry to the media area, which the organisers resolved quickly.

Taken with the 2023 review, the pattern is consistent. Rooms fill for local names as readily as for imported ones, the seated convention-centre halls make for attentive rather than dancing crowds, and the pain point for a first-timer is the clash between stages rather than any shortage of music. The 2026 programme, with its Masekela, Moeketsi and Mhlongo tributes, is explicitly built for the home audience that those reviews describe.