I reflect on painting, music and creative exchange in Soweto, from Lebo's Soweto Backpackers to Sawubona Music Jam and Trackside Studios.
A place that is happening, not only a place that happened
I went to Soweto because I wanted to understand the creative life there now. Its history cannot be separated from the place, especially in 2026, fifty years after the Soweto Uprising. But I did not want to look at Soweto as if its culture had already reached a final form.
What stayed with me was the movement between history and the present. Music, visual art, nightlife, storytelling and activism were not separate departments. They overlapped through people making things, hosting things and creating places for others to meet.
Coming from New York and Berlin, I recognised the energy of a city where culture is built by the people creating it in real time.
Finding the city through local artists
When I travel, I usually ask local street artists where I should go. That is how I heard about Soweto. The quickest way to reach a real creative community is often to start somewhere locally owned, rather than through a polished guide.
I stayed at Lebo's Soweto Backpackers because I had heard that artists were based around it. The location became a starting point for meeting people, hearing recommendations and understanding the city through people already making a life there.
Painting at Lebo's
I painted a small jazz-inspired mural at Lebo's. It came out of the place, the conversations around it and the history of music in Soweto. I was also thinking about how jazz travels, belonging to a place while making connections across cities.
The mural was not a decorative version of Soweto. It was a response to being there, to the people I met and to a site already holding movement, memory and hospitality.
Sawubona Music Jam
On my first night, Juju Diva brought me to Lucky's Sawubona Music Jam. I met musicians, artists and organisers from the local scene, and the night became one of the defining experiences of the trip.
Lucky spoke about building the jam from a living room and garage into what it is now. The van had to be pushed out of the garage whenever the jam needed to happen. Culture was being built with whatever resources were available, through humour, resilience and determination.
We also talked about creative exchange, community spaces and the pressure independent cultural spaces face. Berlin, New York and Johannesburg have different histories, but artists in each place know what it means to build something before a stable structure exists to protect it.
Trackside Studios and the next connection
The next day, I went with people from Lebo's to Trackside Studios to plan the mural and choose a small wall inside the campsite. I stopped at Grayscale in Braamfontein for paint supplies, then spent the afternoon painting a quick mural of a Soweto jazz musician.
Later, a community dinner and storytelling night opened a wider conversation about future collaborations and ways of connecting creative communities between Johannesburg, Berlin and New York.
Trackside's work reminded me that a creative space is defined not only by equipment or programme, but by whether people can use it to make something, meet each other and imagine a next step.
What I brought back
I went to South Africa to document local and underground cultures, but the trip changed how I thought about my own work. I became more aware of the relationship between a mark and the place where it appears, and between an artist's individual image and the people who make a cultural setting possible.
Soweto made me think about culture as active rather than decorative. It is made through music, murals, conversations, meals, rooms, invitations and the decision to keep showing up.
I want to keep building that kind of exchange between Johannesburg, Berlin and New York. Not a polished international identity that removes differences, but real relationships in which the differences remain visible.
Credits
- Original Sketchy Shona field note based on the artist's South Africa visit.
- Background, venue details and published interview context: In Your Pocket Johannesburg.
Read the In Your Pocket Johannesburg feature