Blue Note Africa
Jazz imprint launched 2022 by Blue Note Records and Universal Music Africa to sign African jazz talent.
- Based in
- South Africa
- Founded
- 2022
Blue Note Africa is a jazz imprint launched in April 2022 as a joint venture between Blue Note Records, the storied US jazz label owned by Universal Music Group, and Universal Music Africa. It signs and develops African jazz artists for release through Blue Note’s global distribution, positioning itself, in the words of Universal Music Africa chief executive Sipho Dlamini, to run “from Cape to Cairo to California.”
The imprint is not an independent company. It sits inside the UMG structure, jointly overseen by Dlamini and Blue Note President Don Was, and has no operating website or social account of its own; its announcements run through Blue Note’s and Universal Music Africa’s existing channels. Its flagship and, as of verification, only publicly reported signing is South African pianist-composer Nduduzo Makhathini, who had already released two albums on Universal Music Group Africa before the imprint’s May 2022 debut release, In The Spirit Of Ntu.
