It's a festival on the move

JOY OF JAZZ: ARTISTS REFLECT ON JOURNEY FROM NEWTOWN'S INTIMACY TO SANDTON'S SCALE

- Citizen reporter

Migration has defined humanity for as long as people have walked the earth.

It is a constant force that shapes human populations, cultures, and societies, driven by humanity's core desire for better opportunities and resources.

South Africa's longstanding jazz festival, the Standard Bank Joy of Jazz, has also partly been defined by migration in its 28 years of existence.

First hosted at the State Theatre in Pretoria in 1997, the music festival moved to Newtown's art precinct in 2000 and then later relocated to its current abode, the Sandton Convention Centre in 2014.

"The move to the Convention Centre has multiple benefits," founder of the Joy of Jazz, Peter Tladi of T-Musicman said in 2014.

"It allows us to grow, to sell a full festival pass as well as to improve sound, staging, security and parking. We are no longer at the mercy of the weather."

Initially, the move to Sandton was for five years, however it's now over a decade since that move and the festival has not looked back.

The Joy of Jazz's migration

However, initially when the move to Sandton happened, there was a sense that the festival was losing its soul, having been hosted in Newtown and the Market Theatre for more than a decade.

"When it moved from Newtown, I may have felt a bit biased towards the other sentiments people were feeling," says Sipho "Hotstix" Mabuse.

"Because I really felt for Kippies and inadvertently, many of us who had restaurants and jazz clubs near the Market Theatre, benefited from the Standard Bank Joy of Jazz."