National Youth Jazz Festival
Nonprofit jazz-education festival held annually in Makhanda since 1992, run alongside the National Arts Festival.
- Based in
- Makhanda, South Africa
- Founded
- 1992
- Founder
- Mike Skipper
- Website
- youthjazz.co.za
The National Youth Jazz Festival (NYJF) is a nonprofit jazz-education festival held annually at the Diocesan School for Girls in Makhanda, South Africa. It was founded in 1992 by Mike Skipper, then Head of Music at St. Andrew’s College and the Diocesan School for Girls, with an initial cohort of 43 students and 3 teachers.
The festival is not a commercial company: it runs alongside the National Arts Festival in Makhanda and shares an administrative team with the city’s National Jazz Festival. It has been funded over the years by SAMRO and, for 24 years, by Standard Bank as name sponsor, along with a run of foreign-government and cultural-exchange partners including the Swedish-South African Culture Partnership Programme.
The NYJF now brings together roughly 300 to 350 young jazz musicians, alongside dozens of educators and performers, and is regarded within South African jazz circles as a key pipeline for young talent into the professional scene.
