Facilitator: Gabi Motuba

Gabi Motuba
Gabi Motuba, the 2026 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Jazz, is a Mamelodi-born, Johannesburg-based, award-winning jazz vocalist, composer, and educator at the Wits School of Arts. She is an artist whose practice is marked by deep listening, intellectual rigour, and an unwavering devotion to sound as both discipline and calling. Motuba holds a degree in Jazz Studies from the Tshwane University of Technology.

Over the years, Motuba has built a formidable and expansive body of work that moves fluidly across jazz, avant-garde, and experimental terrains. Her discography reflects an artist in continual dialogue with history, philosophy, and self. Her debut album, Tefiti – Goddess of Creation (2018), announced the arrival of a singular voice, one rooted in myth, imagination, and spiritual inquiry. This was followed by Sanctum Sanctorium (2015), a duo album with Swiss pianist Malcom Braff, which revealed her sensitivity to intimacy, restraint, and sonic conversation. In 2020, she released The Wretched, a bold experimental collaboration that engages directly with the literary and political weight of The Wretched of the Earth, positioning sound as a site of critical reflection and resistance.

Her most recent album, The Sabbath (released December 2024), stands as a defining work in her artistic journey. Conceived for extended ensemble; voice, string quartet, and rhythm section; the album weaves classical, jazz, African, and Eastern influences into a haunting and meditative sonic world. Here, Motuba’s compositional voice is both expansive and intimate, revealing an artist deeply attuned to time, rest, and spiritual release.

Beyond the stage and studio, Motuba’s practice extends into film composition, arrangement, and pedagogy. She has worked as a featured composer and arranger on visual media productions, including An Ordinary People and Blaxis. Her artistic development has been further shaped through participation in significant local and international residencies and fellowships, including Mutual Mentorship for Musicians, the UWC Oscillations Fellowship Programme, OneBeat, and the Soweto Theatre Artist Residency. These platforms have enabled her to refine and share her pedagogical sound processes, build a robust international network, and present her work in evolving, interdisciplinary forms.

Critics consistently praise Motuba for her musicality, compositional depth, and rare ability to articulate the theory that underpins her praxis. She is widely regarded as a compelling composer and a majestic vocalist, an artist capable of holding vast emotional landscapes within a single phrase. Through her work, Gabi Motuba invites listeners, students, and fellow musicians into a practice of seriousness, curiosity, and devotion, offering a living example of what it means to commit one’s life to sound.