Full circle in four decades

A look at the politics, power and promise of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award through the voices of winners past and present

- Kwanele Sosibo

Take a bow: Siya Charles, winner of this year's Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Jazz performs on stage.

(Photo: Supplied)

It’s rare to hear a musician describe themselves as a “musician’s musician”.

Yet, in a conversation preceding this year’s edition of the Standard Bank Joy of Jazz, trombonist Siya Charles, the 2025 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Jazz winner, uses the term self-referentially. I don’t think she's bragging though.

We're discussing how the past 10 months since winning the award have gone, which is when it becomes clearer that she means it more in the sense that she is yet to find commercial success.

And yet, with the resources she has at her disposal as a result of winning the award, she feels relaxed and poised enough to “create the music that is true to me” when it comes time to record her debut album in the first half of next year.

Speaking over voice notes about two weeks before the festival, we delve deeper into the history of the Standard Bank Young Artist (SBYA), with me arguing the awards have historically been rather conservative in their choice of winners, particularly in the apartheid days.

Johnny Clegg, for example, received the award in 1989 after his momentous, decade-long run of albums with Juluka (alongside Sipho Mchunu) was already behind him.

Just a year before, playwright Mbongeni Ngema had been awarded the prize for drama — believe it or not — the same year he staged Sarafina on Broadway.

“It's true you do need a certain amount of success behind you,” Charles says. “But what I do appreciate about the SBYA [award] is that they base the award on merit more than commercial success.”