Women in Music South Africa draws together women from all walks of musical life to support, promote and publicise their work.
Musicians of the month
Thobekile Mbanda affectionately known as Ntomb’Yelanga is a conceptual artist, community activist and uses music as her medium and muse.
Thulile Zama Holds a BA (Music) and recently completed her honours in Culture, Communication and Media at UKZN. She is well known in the jazz circuit and a well-loved vocalist in Durban, and has performed Hamburg, and Berlin in Germany and New Orleans, USA. She is the lead vocalist of award winning all female contemporary jazz band Heels Over Head.
Ulagh Williams is a jazz vocalist, director, conductor, producer and musicologist on jazz and gender. Whilst teaching music at schools across South Africa, she directed choirs, ensembles, big bands and theatre productions. She lectured in jazz and contemporary vocals at Nelson Mandela University (2014-2018) and also at Rhodes University (2017-present) where she is currently studying towards a PhD.
Upcoming projects
Curated by Emma Farquharson, 'Herstory' is a concert-documentary on the lives and works of female composers past and present, local and international. The project champions the work of historically ignored female composers from the Western Art Music canon. to grow both the repertoire and the cast for this very topical issue and bring the music of female composers into the mainstream music curriculum of schools and universities. For more information, please contact the website administrator through the Contact section of this website.
Clare Loveday, Monthati Masebe and Fiona Tozer are part of an international project that pays tribute to Jürgen Braüninger, a Durban-based composer who died last year. Initiated by the Sounding Cities team of Luke Newby (clarinet) and Naomi Sullivan (saxophone), 5 short movies 4 Jürgen 0 social contact (2020) involves composers and improvisers from South Africa and the UK, each writing a one minute response to Braüninger’s saxophone quartet saxophone and/or clarinet. The project launches online in September 2020.
To add your upcoming projects and performances to this list, please submit your event details to us via our Contact form.
Details should include:
a short description (including dates, times, locations),
any relevant social media or website links, and
a hi-res image.