Nduduzo Makhathini’s The Myth We Choose Asks Jazz to Imagine the Future

By Viranova Music Desk22 Jun 2026Music

Most jazz artists record albums to document their present.

Nduduzo Makhathini plays as if he is designing the future.

With his 26 June 2026 Blue Note release, The Myth We Choose, the South African pianist, composer and healer asks a heavy question: if future generations look back at the songs we are making right now, what myths will they inherit?

That question gives the project its weight.

Co-produced by his 18-year-old son, Thingo Makhathini, the album becomes an intergenerational conversation. It is not only a father handing down a tradition. It is a son widening the room, stretching the sonic palette and helping the music imagine what comes next.

That tension between inheritance and invention sits at the centre of the record.

On tracks like “Imvunge KaNtu,” which pays tribute to ancient ideas of African connectedness, Makhathini surrounds his working trio with a powerful circle of collaborators, including Shabaka, Omagugu and Black Coffee.

That line-up already tells you the album is not interested in smallness.

Makhathini has spoken about rejecting the historical burden of the Black body as entertainment. Instead, he approaches performance as ritual, as a place of spiritual work and collective listening. He is not asking the audience to sit back and consume brilliance comfortably.

He is asking them to participate.

That is what makes The Myth We Choose feel so alive.

It is not just an hour of brilliant improvisation. It is an archival project disguised as a jazz record. It is a question posed to the future. It is a reminder that music can carry memory, but it can also shape the stories our descendants will use to understand us.

Makhathini is not only playing notes.

He is building myth.

And he is asking us to choose carefully.

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