Date night at Jozi Gold happened because Among The People I Know and Ofentse Sebula were on the lineup. When artists in my community perform on stages and to audiences that have never experienced them before, I can imagine, it’s heartwarming to see a familiar face in the crowd.
Sofar Sounds Johannesburg hosted Jazz Night at Jozi Gold on 29 May 2026. The dimly lit venue had Angus Hardcastle on that lineup too, my first time experiencing the nostalgic bass guitarist.
The three acts each presented their offerings, one after the other - three to four songs each. Hardcastle kicked them off, then it was Sebula and lastly Tebogo Mosane, AMTPIK, closed off the night.
I experienced for the first time a surprise trick he does for most of his sets, where he invites the other acts to join him for a song. That was cool.
What felt like a thoughtfully curated live performance evening compelled me to find out whose mind, work and time went into creating it. This is a process I love and care about because, well, I do it for work too.
I walked to Jade, as she was the one hosting and MCing for the night, and started going off about how much I enjoyed the show. I learned that she curates the shows, then somewhere in my heap of questions struck one about the representation or lack thereof, of women, in that lineup. Mid-conversation, I realised, I want to archive her story, her mind and the Sofar Sounds Johannesburg story.
And so, a few months later, here we are.
Sofar Sounds (Songs From a Room) is a concept founded in 2009 by three friends in North London. The first show was hosted in one of their flats with eight people attending. The format is quite cheeky - you may know the city in which the event is taking place but the exact venue and artists are revealed 36 hours before. Super cheeky!
You'll usually find three artists perform at each Sofar event with no headliner. And in Johannesburg, I've seen, the events can be themed according to genre and the programming includes Poetry Nights.
Jade Beeby is the curator of the Johannesburg house of the global Sofar Sounds. This is an opportunity she willingly walked into, without any real remuneration except fulfilling an audience, an art community and her passion.
TSHEGO:
I remember you said, you're the one who was like, yeah, I want to do this. What called you to it and did you have any prior experience?
JADE:
Yeah, so I am a musician, I also studied theatre. So I enjoy creating events. I’ve helped a couple of cafes and venues do open mics, so that they could get people into their spaces. I also run the Shakespeare Schools Festival in Johannesburg. So coordinating events is kind of a thing that I do.
I’ve always had this idea to create an event called Rug Sessions where we invite artists to come and perform on a rug. The rug can be anywhere, can be on a rooftop, can be in a restaurant. It can be wherever. And when I created the proposal years ago, Sofar was one of the inspirations for what the show would look like.
Then I was on LinkedIn one day and they were looking for curators to bring Sofar to Cape Town. I said to myself, “Let me just apply”. I answered all the questions for the job, and I was like, "I'm putting my hat in the ring. I don't know if they're even looking for a Joburg person. "
When I got into the interview, they were like, "It's in Cape Town”.
I was like, “I don't know if you guys noticed, but my answer to your questions were not for Cape Town”.
And they were like, “Yeah, we noticed.”
I ended up going through the rounds and they applauded my entrepreneurial spirit and gave the go-ahead. I had to give a visual idea of the show and how we'd execute it. And it worked.
TSHEGO:
It's been almost a year and how has it been - in terms of attendance? And how are you defining success or even just the journey?
JADE:
It's been a roller coaster, the very first show sold out so fast. And then, very slowly, not as much interest.
It is an experience because I'm finding for certain areas, the ticket prices need to be specific.
Certain areas, like Braam, didn't make high ticket sales and I don’t know if it’s because there’s this stigma that still exists in people’s brains about Braam. And if the show was in Rosebank versus in Braam. There are different results. And we had three shows back-to-back in Braam and some did really well. Then you wonder if it was those specific shows that didn’t do well or what…
We've got one coming up now in Bryanston and the ticket sales are slow, but they're not as slow. So I'm just trying to see what it is, you know.
We have to find that happy medium of ticket price, location and artist line-up. A lot of it is very much playing with the different features. So it's been good, but it hasn't been great considering we are still learning and we're trying to figure out what works best.
For me personally, the success of it - finances aside - is very much the audience's response to the shows. The people that come to talk to me after the shows are like, "Oh my gosh, we need it. Oh my gosh, this is so important. When can I come again?"
I feel so successful because it's such a unique audience base who cares to listen. It’s people who are prepared to spend the money to hear new music, who want to come and listen.
The engagement on social media is also incredible. I had to restart the Instagram account because I didn't know who owned the old one, and the Sofar Global team couldn't find them either. So they started a new one for me. We're sitting on1000 followers now and we started the account in March this year. A lot of the work I've had to do has been easier because people know the brand, so the name speaks for itself. People are also trying to put each other on, raising their hands to be on the next lineup and always curious and excited about who’ll be on the next one.
TSHEGO:
I like your energy and spirit. The essence of what you're doing is about people who care about the work and making them meet the people who are creating the work. So, tell me about your curation - do always use the applications or do you sometimes have your personal artists you'd like?
JADE:
I can reach out to people, yes. But they have to still apply and make a submission to the Sofar website because also payments are made through that system. And what I try to look for in applications is videos of people performing on a stage to identify see stage presence and crowd interaction. If the videos are of the person in their room with their guitar, then maybe they haven't been on stage yet. And I often ask them to upload different videos so that I can see a different perspective.
I also get a lot of random stuff. I've had one where it's just a YouTube video of a guy saying hello.
So we prefer somebody who knows what they're trying to do and bring to the stage.
If the performance in the video is a cover, I find out if they have original music that they would be able to share. Unless we're doing a Cover Night and that’s the theme.
I then look at who I think will work well together, and then if we have a venue for it, then we make the show!
Like, for example, I had a guy who applied and a lot of his videos were gospel music. So I'm not against that, but I need 2 other gospel artists to compliment him.
Sofar is very much about discovering new music and original music, so I always have that in mind in my curation.
And if there's potential, but I’m not certain, I share the videos with the rest of my team and we take it from there. So it's also very subjective, I'm not the only one going through the video submissions.
TSHEGO:
Which artists specifically have you personally reached out to?
JADE:
MarsBaby, Lord Kez, Mikhale Jones are few I can remember off the top of my head. The first show we did have to do a lot of reaching out. Most have also been quite organic in that sometimes we reach out and they have already applied to be part of the the shows.
TSHEGO:
Because then I'm thinking about Jazz Night. Remember, I asked you if there weren't any women submissions?
JADE:
Yes, remember I told you we had a woman on the lineup but they were based in Cape Town. And in the Johannesburg scene there weren’t any Jazz submissions from women who were available for that night. But I also spoke to Lyric who is the manager for Ofentse Sebula and she was helping with finding a woman artist for the lineup as she had applied for a bunch of her artists.
And so, she was the one who tried to get us a woman on the lineup for that night, specifically ones that would have been a great mix with the artists we had. But the mix of artists we ended up with surprised me because they all knew each other very well. Something else that pleasant surprised me is that there wasn’t much singing or vocals from any of the acts. That was interesting; and I know that's jazz, but it can sometimes have vocals.
Also, I'm trying my best in all the other shows to balance representation and maintain diversity in all its ways. So I'm learning as I go,
TSHEGO:
Do you intentionally curate to balance or sometimes you just say, okay, all the people that applied and I'm finding here are all men or all women? So let's just go with that.
JADE:
Look, I am trying to balance it. But in some cases, it's not possible. In some cases, the people aren't available. In some cases, maybe I actually just don't have any women, you know? So I do, I do try to think about that balance and what we are showcasing. For sure.
TSHEGO:
When did you feel confident in your power? Because it is power being able to say, this will work, this is the one in terms of a show and a line-up.
JADE:
I don't know if I ever feel completely confident until the night that they are actually performing. Because I might have seen some people perform before, but I haven't seen all three of them together. So knowing that it's gonna work is really based off of trust and faith on each individual artist and their application. But so far it's been incredible. It's been so lovely. With our most recent Poetry Night, somebody asked how I decided who went first, second and third? And my answer was, "This is just what I planned". I didn't know how it was gonna work out altogether. I knew I wanted this person to be last and this person made sense in the middle and it somehow all works out.
It's a one-and-done experience. And I think theatre informs my trust in that process because the difference between theatre and film is that with film you can curate the exact thing you want people to see. But with a live performance, the night you come for opening night versus the third night that they've been doing the show, you're not going to see the same show. But you have to trust that after you've put it together that they'll do a good job. You have to let it go at some point. Usually by sound check, I'm a lot lighter and feel like this is gonna work. But before that, I can't really know, to be honest.
TSHEGO:
How are the audiences responding to the format?
JADE
So we've been revealing artists before the location and we do it like in a drip. In the week, say Monday, we do the first announcement, the next one on Tuesday and Wednesday we do the third. Then Thursday will be the location reveal, and then Saturday is the show. And that's been working quite well because then people learn who they're going to experience and can also do some research beforehand if they aren't familiar with them. It's been crazy to see how many people buy tickets to shows way before they know who they're gonna see.
TSHEGO:
I talk to some artists and DJs and they don't want to do the work of a promoter. The having to sell your own show, talking about it on social media, begging people to buy tickets. So it's very refreshing to just have people trust the work and the production,
It's an honest format. One comes for the music or for the poetry solely for the art.
JADE:
Exactly. And it creates a platform for people who don't know where to even start. Some artists want to share their work with people but don't know where to go or who's coming to listen and have anxieties about audiences not knowing them. And so people who have never heard their work are now being exposed to this music because that's what the brand is about. And now you have an audience base that you never even would have pitched to before.
TSHEGO:
I love that. Is there a one in Durban?
JADE:
There isn't one in Durban that I know of. And I don't know if the Sofar global team is looking. But I know that there are hiring curators left, right and centre.
TSHEGO:
Your audience, your attendance so far, who's attending, what is the demographic?
JADE:
Everyone. It hasn't been specific. I remember there was a walk-in once; they were tourists that walked past and saw that something was going on. One of them made a connection to a Sofar they experienced in Berlin and the group bought tickets to experience the show. So, it's literally all kinds of people also depending on the artists that perform.
TSHEGO:
When do you start plannining for the next show?
JADE:
I plan like 2 months in advance. It's also based on when the venues are available that I can start pushing a job usually like a month or 2 in advance so that I don't have to stress. We also have a runway for tickets because if I try to put the post up two weeks before the show happens, then I have to struggle to get the tickets happening, you know? So if I have at least a month that the tickets are on sale, then I can secure more people in the venue.
TSHEGO:
Damn. So your mind is always probably on.
JADE:
Yeah, girl. I told you, no rest.
TSHEGO:
Do you enjoy it?
JADE:
No, I love this. This is my passion. This is the thing that I care about, like, you know. The rest is so that I can buy cheese and nappies for my child. But this, this thing I will do because I care about it. It's the same as the festival that I run for schools, I like that stuff. It is not something that I'm doing for the money, but that I'm doing because I care about the arts in South Africa and I want it to keep going.
TSHEGO:
Thank you so much for that. Thank you so much for your passion, for your heart. I say this as an artist, as an advocate, for artists, as someone who likes to archive the stories of art during our time. Thank you so much for what you do and for honestly making time. I really enjoyed Jazz Night and I did not know about Sofar Sounds, the format, that it's global. The moment I learned that as you were speaking and as the show went on. I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is really cool."
Upon reflection as we went through our conversation, I realised spaces like Your Weekly Touch Up, Black Labone, Soundcheckn, Tuesday Funk have this similar infrastructure. These are South African music residencies, spaces and platforms that allow for improvisation, collaboration in the music scene. They are platforming young, untapped talent in the country. The work they have done in South African should, could and will (I speak it into existence), spread to our fellow brothers , sisters and thems in our neighbouring African countries similar to how Sofar found itself in this continent.
The final quotation from Jade is so powerful that I'd let it stand almost entirely on its own.
My biggest focus is to get to a point where it's successful enough that all of us are not just volunteering for the passion, but that we are all getting paid in some kind of way from the shows. Because that's important to me. I don't like this thing of black artists working for exposure; you know how the arts industry is. We make sure that the artists get paid, but we also want to make sure that the teams who are working for the shows get paid as well. So that's where we're moving towards. I just need the shows to get traction in a way that the ticket sales give us the money we need to keep going."
Makubenjalo for this team and all of us!