15 Apr 2025

The Botswana Society for Jazz Education (BOSjE) will on April 30 celebrate International Jazz Day at the Botswana Craft. 

“This year’s International Jazz Day will feature 100 per cent Batswana local musicians, as we believe in building our own community and artistes to be headliners in a festival,” founder and chairperson of BOSjE, Akhutleleng Kekwaletswe said during a media brief on the International Jazz Day activities. 

Scheduled to perform at the International Jazz Day are WDP, Grow to Black Collective, Socca Moruakgomo, DJ Jembe Soul, BOSjE Big Bans, The Fleek Band, Kingdom Arts Academy Ensemble, Kingdom Arts Academy Marimba, JD 2025 Choir and Joseph Sax. 

Kekwaletswe also said BOSjE would bid to host the 2028 International Jazz Day. To realise the dream, she said they required support from government, private sector, National Arts Council of Botswana (NACB) and all media, as the country would be bringing the world to Botswana. She emphasised the role of media in the success of winning the bid, saying from 2026, they would work on achieving it. 

“Every year, when we host the International Jazz Day here, we try and really do something that is needed on the bid and see if we are able to deliver so that we prepare, as the bid is clear of what they want and what the host country needs to achieve and put together if they want to host,” Kekwaletswe said, adding the work towards the bid was done two years prior. As such, she said BOSjE would work on the bid in 2026. 

Additionally, she said they wished to benchmark from an African country that had already hosted the event, ‘as it will be more relevant to our situation’. In the run up to the International Jazz Day, she said BOSjE would host instrumental clinics, workshops and master classes to engage learners from schools around the country that offered music in their curriculum. 

“These workshops are, however, not only meant for students, but for the community and they are free,” she said.

Kekwaletswe said the activities would be held at the Kingdom Arts Academy. She said the workshops would introduce the learners to musicians and educators as they celebrated the joy of jazz. She said they were committed to building a vibrant jazz culture that was inclusive, educational and internationally connected. 

BOSjE, established in 2015, was formed to create a platform for jazz musicians and aspiring jazz musicians to grow, to share ideas and even have their work documented. The society exists to run workshops and hosts festivals and exchange programmes, after realising the need for jazz education with the aim to document, preserve and archive Botswana jazz heritage as well as building the jazz community by advancing education and research. 

Leroy Nyoni of WDP said jazz was a soft power of cultural diplomacy and that it was important to collaborate even after the jazz day. He said the day capacitates the youth with its culmination of workshops and master classes who end up becoming stars in their own right from the skills and education from BOSjE. 

Sebaga Rabantheng, a member of BOSjE and also a saxophonist, said the society provided a platform for them to educate themselves on music. She also said it had boosted her self-esteem and had created a platform for her to interpret music in a special way. Tickets for the International Jazz Day are sold at P250 single and P400 double. ENDS