Nala Collective and the Women Rewriting Cape Town Jazz

By Viranova Music Desk07 Jun 2026Music

A drum kit is a heavy thing, both physically and culturally.

For decades in many jazz spaces, the people sitting behind the cymbals, blowing the brass and directing the band have often been men. Too often, women in jazz have been more visible as vocalists than as instrumentalists, bandleaders and composers.

Nala Collective is quietly, systematically challenging that pattern.

Formed by young musicians who came through the University of Cape Town’s jazz programme — including drummer Tanatswa Pepukai, alongside Carli Morkel and Hope Hadebe — this women-led instrumentalist collective is not just playing music.

It is reshaping part of Cape Town’s jazz conversation.

Their recent performances, including a slot at the AfroDiaspora Connection in May 2026, have made the collective harder to ignore. The group was born out of a specific frustration: the exhaustion of having to constantly prove oneself in male-dominated rehearsal rooms.

Pepukai has spoken about the surprise people still show at seeing a woman behind the drums.

That surprise is exactly the problem.

By creating their own ecosystem, Nala Collective creates a space where women instrumentalists can play, experiment and lead without constantly having to prove themselves in male-dominated rooms.

That freedom matters.

It allows the musicians to make mistakes, stretch ideas and build a sound that feels authentic rather than defensive. More importantly, the collective deliberately champions the work of South African women composers, making sure women are represented not just in the performance of the music, but in its architecture.

Cape Town jazz has a long, storied history, deeply tied to the political and social struggles of the city.

What Nala Collective is doing feels like the next chapter of that legacy.

They are making sure the future of the genre sounds more like the people who actually live in it.

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