Standard Bank Joy of Jazz Festival

Standard Bank Joy of Jazz is Johannesburg's flagship jazz festival, running since the late 1990s each September across multiple indoor stages in the city. It combines leading South African jazz musicians with international acts and has become a recurring reference point in the careers of South African jazz performers, cited widely as a major festival credit in artist biographies.

Standard Bank Joy of Jazz has become enough of an institution in Johannesburg that its name shows up repeatedly, almost casually, inside the biographies of South African jazz and jazz-adjacent musicians: a vocalist recalling an early performance there, a rising artist listing it alongside the National Arts Festival in Makhanda as a career-defining booking.