Lordkez brings R&B-rooted sound to Cape Town International Jazz Festival debut

For Lordkez, the journey to the Cape Town International Jazz Festival stage has been years in the making. This weekend will mark her first time both attending and performing at the festival, a milestone that carries particular weight for an artist who once imagined the moment from the audience.

“It’s an absolute honour,” she says. “To be on that stage and sharing it with some of the most incredible musicians in the world, it feels like a big blessing.

”What audiences will encounter, however, is not an artist arriving fully formed overnight but one who has spent years building towards this moment.

Born in Kimberley and now based in Johannesburg, Lordkez traces her earliest musical foundations back to the church. It was there, around the age of 12 or 13, that she began singing and learning piano, developing a relationship with music that would eventually shape her career. 

Those early years were accompanied by the sounds that filled her home, artists like Whitney Houston and Brandy, whose influence echoes in her work today.

Her path into music as a profession was less immediate. A period spent living in Abu Dhabi between 2015 and 2019 proved formative, offering the distance and clarity needed to make a decision that would define her future.

“That’s actually where I decided that I wanted to do it for real,” she recalls.

That decision led her to Cape Town in 2020, where she studied sound engineering at the SAE Institute. The move was not only about technical training but about immersion, understanding the mechanics of music-making while beginning to shape her own voice within it.

By the time she began releasing music, that voice was still evolving. Over the past seven years, her catalogue has moved fluidly between alternative R&B, neo-soul, hip-hop and jazz influences, reflecting an artist in search of both sound and identity.

Her debut album, Testament, would become a turning point. The project, which earned her a South African Music Award for Best R&B/Soul Album, leaned into vulnerability and self-reflection, offering a more intimate portrait of her artistry.

Yet even then, it remained stylistically expansive, part of a broader process of experimentation.
It is only more recently that that process has begun to resolve.

Following the success of Testament, Lordkez made a conscious decision to refine her focus, leaning more fully into the R&B traditions that first shaped her musical instincts.

That shift is evident in newer work like You, Me and the 90s, a project rooted in the textures and sensibilities of classic R&B. The shift has unfolded alongside the growing impact of Aweh, a track that has become one of her most recognisable releases, particularly after its remix with Cassper Nyovest.

“I really wanted to zone in and hone in on R&B,” she explains. “To do what comes naturally to me.

”The result is a sound that feels more assured, grounded not in exploration for its own sake but in a clearer sense of artistic identity. It is a shift she describes as part of embracing her full self, both musically and personally.

The evolution has unfolded alongside a growing presence on stage. In recent years, Lordkez has built a reputation as a compelling live performer, appearing at major local festivals such as Rocking the Daisies and In the City, while also expanding her reach internationally.

A European tour with Mi Casa saw her perform across cities including Paris, London, Barcelona and Dublin, an experience she describes as transformative.

“It changed the way I see music and perform music,” she says. “Overseas, it’s serious.”

She has also appeared at events like the TikTok Sub-Saharan Africa Awards and Soul DXB, steadily building a performance résumé that now leads to one of the country’s most prestigious stages.

At the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, she will bring the experience into a setting that demands both precision and adaptability. Festival audiences are rarely uniform. They’re a mix of dedicated fans and first-time listeners. And navigating that dynamic requires a particular kind of awareness.

For Lordkez, preparation is key. In the days leading up to the performance, rehearsals with her four-piece band which consists of keys, bass, guitar and drums stretch for hours, refining both sound and structure. Beyond that, her routine extends to vocal preparation, physical wellbeing and the mental discipline required to stay grounded amid the pressure of a major stage.

The performance itself, she suggests, will reflect the breadth of her catalogue.

Audiences can expect a set that moves between her earlier, more experimental work and her newer, R&B-driven material, incorporating elements of jazz and alternative influences along the way. More than that, she frames the experience as something immersive.

“A musical journey,” she says simply.

That sense of movement between sounds, influences and phases of her career mirrors the trajectory that has brought her here. What happens on stage this weekend will not just be a showcase of where she is now but a reflection of the path she has taken to get there.

Beyond the festival, that journey continues. A second album is in progress, alongside a growing list of performances that will carry her into new spaces and audiences. If the past year has felt like a period of rapid change, the next may well define what comes afterwards.

For now, though, the focus remains on the moment at hand.

At the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, Lordkez steps onto a stage she once dreamt about, not as an outsider looking in but as an artist ready to claim her place within it.