Kaya 959 The Jazz Standard

Professor Simphiwe Sesanti, Dr Athambile Masola and Nkosinathi Biko on The Jazz Standard With Brenda Sisane

Loading player...
2026 marks what would have been the 80th birthday of Steve Biko, and the December 2025 release of the isiXhosa translation of I Write What I Like arrives as both remembrance and gift - a return of his words to a language that carried his earliest consciousness.

This isiXhosa edition - translated by the late Professor Peter Tshobisa Mtuze, with editorial stewardship from Professor Simphiwe Sesanti and Dr Athambile Masola - and carrying a new foreword by Nkosinathi Biko - reopens a text that never closed. It asks us: what does Black Consciousness sound like in the mother tongue? What does liberation mean when it is spoken in the rhythm of home?
15 Feb English South Africa Music History · Music Commentary

Other recent episodes

Sibongile Nene on The Jazz Standard With Brenda Sisane

Sibongile Nene is an Art practitioner with an academic background in Music, Drama and Film. She studied drama at Drama Studio London and Ethnomusicology at The College of Music (Zimbabwe). Her debut CD ‘Sangoma’ earned a ‘Best Producer Award’ (Music frica, Toronto, Canada). The album is a rendition of traditional…
18 Oct 32 min

Kesivan Naidoo on The Jazz Standard with Brenda Sisane

Kesivan Naidoo is a drummer, composer, arranger and bandleader. He leads Kesivan and the Lights, has built big-band projects around both jazz and amapiano, and he has worked with artists including Miriam Makeba, Bheki Mseleku, Zim Ngqawana, Abdullah Ibrahim and Maria Schneider. He also made history when he received the…
18 Oct 27 min

Kelly Green on The Jazz Standard with Brenda Sisane

A pianist can tell you a lot about a song before they say a word. But when that pianist is also the vocalist, composer and arranger, the conversation gets even more interesting. Kelly Green is a Steinway Artist, a New York-based pianist, vocalist, composer and bandleader whose work brings high-energy…
30 Aug 24 min

David Virelles on The Jazz Standard with Brenda Sisane

Santiago de Cuba is a city of percussion and procession, of voices and ceremony, of music carried through generations — sometimes written down, sometimes remembered in the body. And somewhere in that soundscape, a young David Virelles was listening. Listening to Cuban music, to Bach, to the elders and to…
4 Oct 36 min
All episodes