Composer, pianist, teacher, and healer Nduduzo Makhathini is one of the most exciting live artists in the international jazz scene today. Born into a musical family in uMgungundlovu near Pietermaritzburg, the son of musicians, Makhathini received his first musical training at home and his second in school and church choirs.
He later studied music at the Durban Institute of Technology. Since 2006, he has played in various bands and quickly gained recognition as one of the leading voices of South African jazz. After his Berlin concert, Maxi Broecking holds a conversation with the artist.
On Saturday, 7 March 2026, Nduduzo Makhathini will perform at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt’s Miriam Makeba Auditorium, he performs in a trio with Lukmil Perez on drums and Dalisu Ndlazi on double bass.
His album Ikhambi won Best Jazz Album at the South African Music Awards in 2018. The 2020 Blue Note release Modes of Communication: Letters From The Underworlds, hailed by the New York Times as one of the best jazz albums of the year, helped him achieve a worldwide breakthrough.
Makhathini’s compositions and improvisations, his piano playing and his chanting are deeply rooted in Zulu traditions. He is a teacher and a healer who seeks and establishes a connection to the ancestors and to creation in his concerts. His three-movement suite uNomkhubulwane is dedicated to the daughter of God of the same name, who stands for prosperity and fertility, but also for balance and equilibrium. Prosperity here does not come at the expense of others—a very important principle in Zulu philosophy.
Questions and Answers
3 FACTS
1: I come to being a pianist as a way of dealing with bone divinities, a practice known as ukwebhula (part of a healing practice known as ngoma) and that informs my approach as an improviser: I play towards prophecies.
2: I have a huge interest in creation myths and Bantu cosmologies.
3: I have just been in studio for my upcoming Blue Note album The Myth We Choose and it was Co-produced by my 18year old son Thingo Makhathini.
11 QUESTIONS
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
Be-ing.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
I come from a village that sings: from my family, community and to environment. I was born into song. The musicality of all things kept the morals, ethics and principles of people. It provided some type of governance and repertoire was the language of the everyday. It is how we were taught to navigate reality and the beyond.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
John Coltrane A Love Supreme (1965), Philip Tabane Unh! (1989), Busi Mhlongo Babhemu (1993), Oumou Sangare Denw (1996) and Mseleku Home at Last (2003)
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Berlin is well known for being one of the main hubs for contemporary arts around the world. So I guess one always senses that when coming to play here — it is also the complex histories of the place that give the art its vibrational depth. It is a difficult dance.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
I love to visit the Berlin Trodelmarkt and of course, I adore a lot of the music venues here that I have played over the years.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
I love writing.
7. What was the last record you bought or listened to?
I have not been buying records lately, I listen to books instead. I am inspired by stories.
8. Looking back, which collaborations have been most influential throughout your career?
There are so many, I have done several ones with Wynton Marsalis, Black Coffee and recently, I have collaborated with the WDR Big Band. I am blessed with working with several great musicians all around the world, each of them contributes some unique and special to my journey.
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
I definitely do not have a best gig, but there are moments on stage I will not forget. Last year I played the Pierre-Boulez-Saal with a really special project ‘A Return to Essence, Tuning into Modalities of Humanness’, that concert felt deep. There was a presence on the bandstand that I cannot really explain, it touched me in an intense way.
10. How did your 2024 album ‘uNomkhubulwane’ come to life?
uNomkhubulwane is understood to be a mythical rain Goddess who regulates fertility through the language of water. The album is underpinned by an understanding of mythical institutions of Nguni peoples of Southern Africa, their connection to the cosmos and how that relates to ingoma (sound making and healing strategies).
11. What can we expect from your upcoming performance at Haus der Kulturen der Welt?
I struggle with this question due to two reasons. I deem my work as stemming from some type of improvisation traditions and I perceive ‘jazz’ as some kind of ‘fugitive aesthetic’. These two positionalities paralyse language, there cannot be much said about the music before and post the moment of creativity. So I spend a lot of time thinking about other things such as: “where does sound go post the moment of enunciation?” I find such questions liberating in a sense of what I call an ‘elsewhere’ — sounds come from another world and to it, they return.
Essentially, anyone that experiences my music gets an opportunity to space travel and sort, choose the world they hope for. So that is perhaps what people can expect, ‘an opportunity to collectively design future myths.’
