Jazz has always been more than just music. It’s resistance. It’s freedom. It’s rhythm shaped by memory and rebellion. On International Jazz Day, celebrated every April 30th, the world comes together to honor this deeply expressive genre that is rooted in the Black experience and constantly reinvented across continents.
At Zeda, we celebrate this day by turning our spotlight to the African women, especially Kenyan women, who are not just performing jazz, but reimagining it. They’re blending it with local sounds, speaking truth through song, and reclaiming spaces long dominated by men.
A Global Day with Local Meaning
UNESCO launched International Jazz Day in 2011 to recognize jazz as a tool for peace, dialogue, and cultural diplomacy. But for us, it’s also a day to remember the women whose voices have been silenced in the global jazz narrative, and to center the ones who keep the genre alive in our cities, cafes, studios, and stages.
In Africa, jazz found new breath in the harmonies of South African protest music, in Ethiopian Ethio-jazz, in Nigerian highlife, and in Kenyan benga-inspired improvisation. And within this ever-evolving soundscape, African women have always been there, composing, singing, drumming, leading bands, and keeping time with history.
The Kenyan Jazz Women You Should Know
June Gachui is one of the most compelling voices in Kenya’s jazz scene. A singer, storyteller, and advocate who commands the stage with grace and power. Through her music and platforms like The Motown in Nairobi and The Jaza Jazz Series, she’s created space for Kenyan artists to shine.
Serro, though often categorized under Afro-fusion, incorporates jazz elements in her vocal arrangements and instrumentation, proving that jazz isn’t a box but a wide-open field.
Then there’s Lisa Oduor-Noah, whose velvety tone and intricate phrasing call to mind the soul of classic jazz while remaining unmistakably rooted in her Kenyan identity. Her work as a performer and educator pushes young African musicians to be daring, intentional, and free.
And let’s not forget the countless women instrumentalists from trumpeters and saxophonists like Christine Kamau and percussionists like Kasiva Mutua whose names aren’t always front and center, but who are expanding what jazz looks like in Nairobi and beyond.
Jazz, in its essence, is about breaking form. It’s about improvisation; that radical act of trusting your own voice in real time. And that’s why it has always belonged to women, even when the world tried to exclude them from it.
African women in jazz are not just participating; they are shaping the sound of modern Africa. They’re fusing tradition with experimentation, bringing jazz into dialogue with taarab, ohangla, and electronic beats. They’re building community through jam sessions and festivals, and they’re reminding us that jazz, like freedom, must be constantly claimed.
What We’re Listening To
This Jazz Day, Zeda is curating a playlist of African women in jazz and jazz-adjacent genres. From Kenya to Cape Town, Dakar to Addis, these are voices that inspire, protest, uplift, and groove. Celebrating African women in jazz isn’t just about music. It’s about visibility, cultural memory, and legacy. It’s about recognizing how sound can carry our histories, and how women are often the unsung archivists of that sound.
So today, we raise our glasses and our voices to the women who keep the music going. The ones who riff and wail and whisper against the silence. The ones who remind us that jazz isn’t something we borrow, it’s something we’ve always known.
