What the Applause Doesn’t Cover

A woman in patent leather heels sobbed quietly beside a man in a linen hat. Neither looked at each other. They weren’t lovers. They were strangers. What brought them to tears wasn’t just the closing notes of the Cape Town International Jazz Festival—it was the unspoken thing threaded between them: the music knew something they didn’t want to say aloud.

Because CTIJF 2025 wasn’t merely Africa’s grandest gathering. It was a mirror—shined and distorted, hopeful and haunted. From the outside, it gleamed. Over 40 acts, four stages, two days of rhythm, spectacle, and joy so curated it sparkled. But beneath that flawless production, there was grit. There was ache. There was something humming low, in minor key.

Velvet Curtains and Cracked Floors

The festival has always branded itself with elegance and scope, and it delivered both with immaculate precision this year—technically. But not emotionally. Not entirely. There were moments when the stage lights felt too bright, like they were trying to burn away something inconvenient. You felt it when the crowd didn’t know whether to dance or stand still. When an artist paused too long between songs, searching for a word that wouldn’t come.

One set in particular bled through the boundaries. As the final chords reverberated across the Cape Town International Convention Centre, one of the performers whispered into the mic: “We’re not just playing—we’re remembering.” The audience froze. Was it grief? Celebration? A warning?

We are taught to clap, to celebrate excellence. But excellence isn’t always comfortable. And sometimes what looks like perfection is actually pressure.

Who Decides What a Stage Is For?

There’s a growing edge to these gatherings. You feel it backstage, in side conversations, in the defiant experimentalism of younger artists. They are not here just to entertain. They are here to interrogate. To ask why African music, so often extracted and exoticized, must still dance to someone else’s idea of global approval.

The CTIJF is a jewel, yes. But maybe it’s time to stop polishing and start revealing. Maybe the grandest gathering on the continent isn’t about shining brighter—but sounding deeper.

The festival’s organizers know they’ve created something precious. The question is: precious to whom? And at what cost?

The wrap party glittered. People sipped champagne and posed for photos under neon signage. But I kept looking for the woman in the heels, and the man with the linen hat. What song were they still hearing in the quiet?

And what if that’s the true encore—the one we never let play out?