MAIN PICTURE: Khosi with husband Lucky
LEN KALANE
From a Katlehong shebeen to Sunday mornings on air — one woman turned a lifetime of listening into a voice all her own. This is how it all starts: It is six o’clock on a Sunday morning, and while most of Johannesburg is still asleep, Khosi Radebe is already home. Not home in the physical sense — she is tucked behind a mixing desk in a small studio, headphones snug over her ears, red walls glowing around her like the inside of a heartbeat — but home in the way that matters most.
This is The Jazz Lounge, her Sunday-morning residency on Urban Edge Radio, and for three hours every week, Khosi does what she has quietly been training to do her whole life: she welcomes people into a world built entirely out of rhythm, memory and family.
To meet her on air is to meet a woman with an unmistakable, booming warmth — the kind of presence that makes strangers feel like regulars. But to understand where that warmth comes from, you have to go back more than fifty years, to a shebeen in Katlehong, Ekurhuleni, where a little girl was quietly absorbing everything.
THE CLASSROOM NOBODY CALLED A CLASSROOM
Khosi was born in the 1970s, the youngest of four siblings, in Katlehong during apartheid South Africa. Long before she ever touched a microphone, her life was already being scored by other people’s record collections.
“I am the youngest of four siblings and, although they may never have realised it, they were my first music teachers,” she says. Each sibling opened a different door — different sounds, different artists, different ways of listening — and without anyone assigning homework, Khosi was doing the work anyway. “My love for music wasn’t learned in a classroom, it was nurtured at home through shared moments, lively conversations and the records that filled our lives.”
That home happened to be a shebeen, run by her parents. In the popular imagination, a shebeen was simply a place to drink and dance. Khosi knew better. “To many, shebeens were places to socialise and enjoy music, but during apartheid they were much more than that,” she explains. “They were sanctuaries where people sought relief from the weight of daily life, where communities gathered, friendships were forged and hope was kept alive.”
The soundtrack of that sanctuary was township music, soul, jazz and African rhythms, all blending into one another the way only a shebeen jukebox could manage. Legendary singer Mam’ Thandi Klaasen was a regular visitor, her music becoming part of the wallpaper of Khosi’s childhood. Some of Khosi’s most treasured family photographs are from this era — her mother in the kitchen, cooking for patrons, laughter filling every corner of the house, and one image she returns to often: her mother beaming, holding a Shirley Scott album, For Members Only, like a trophy.
“Those photographs are more than memories,” Khosi says. “They are reminders of the role music played in shaping our family story.”
But the shebeen was more than music — it was a parliament of ordinary people. Workers, activists, intellectuals and neighbours gathered around those tables, not only to unwind but to argue politics, trade ideas and imagine a South Africa that didn’t yet exist. “Looking back, I realise that some of the most important conversations of that era happened in spaces like ours,” she reflects. Decisions about joining the struggle, or leaving the country altogether, were made over the very drinks she used to help serve as a child. The regulars became family in their own right — people she knew only by first name, who nonetheless helped raise her. “They taught me that community is built through generosity, respect and shared humanity.”
There was a second classroom, too: her grandmother’s home in Balfour. Khosi still remembers waking before sunrise to the smell of porridge filling the house. “Those mornings taught me humility, gratitude and an appreciation for life’s simple blessings,” she says — values she carries into every conversation she has on air today.
FINDING ANOTHER FAMILY IN JAZZ
If childhood planted the seed, young love watered it. When Khosi began dating Lucky — then her boyfriend, now her husband — the two of them fell headlong into South Africa’s jazz scene, living out what they still fondly call the sidlis life: chasing one jazz session after another, collecting records, meeting people, soaking up a culture neither of them fully understood yet. “At the time, we thought we were simply having fun,” she says. “We had no idea we were entering a community that would become another family.”
That community did not just tolerate two young newcomers — it adopted them. Elders who had spent their lives preserving South African jazz opened their homes and their wisdom: Bra Benny Tlohtlalemaje, Bab’ Mncedi Zulu, Bab’ Mzobe, Sis Julia, Sis Lucy, Mama Ella, Sis Patience, and others besides. “They welcomed us as though we had always belonged,” Khosi remembers. What they taught her went far beyond liner notes and chord changes. “They taught us that jazz was never just about records or concerts. It was about community, humility, respect, storytelling and preserving a legacy for future generations.”
Many of those elders have since taken their final bow. Khosi speaks of them in the present tense as much as the past. “Their presence remains with me every time I sit behind the microphone, every artist I interview and every playlist I curate,” she says. “Their lessons continue to shape my work as a broadcaster, curator and advocate for South African jazz.”
Through it all, Lucky has remained her constant. “He remains my mentor, greatest source of encouragement and biggest cheerleader,” Khosi says of her husband. “He believed in me long before many others did, constantly reminding me to trust my voice and embrace opportunities that once seemed beyond my reach.” It is a partnership built inside jazz clubs and record shops, one that has quietly underwritten every milestone since.
A VOICE SHE ALMOST DIDN’T KNOW SHE HAD
For most of her adult life, Khosi’s professional home was not a radio studio but a human resources office — a career she has built over more than twenty years. It is a detail easy to overlook, yet it explains so much about the broadcaster she has become. “That career has taught me that every person carries a story worth hearing, every challenge presents an opportunity for growth, and leadership begins with listening,” she says. Those same instincts — empathy, curiosity, respect — now shape every interview she conducts. “The values of professionalism, resilience, excellence and service that guide me in my career are the same values I bring to broadcasting.”
It took a friend to notice what Khosi herself had perhaps never quite named. “My journey into radio began because a dear friend, Monnye Kunupi, recognised my deep love for jazz and encouraged me to pursue it.” Urban Edge Radio’s management, she says, took a chance on someone with no formal broadcasting background at all — betting instead on passion, authenticity and personality.
“It is a humbling reminder that when passion meets purpose, extraordinary things can happen.”
A little over a year later, that bet has paid off spectacularly: the station now carries a nomination in the Best Radio Station Promoting Jazz category at the Mzantsi Jazz Awards. “This nomination is not just a celebration of a radio station,” Khosi says, “it is a celebration of every artist, jazz lover, mentor, listener and family member who has walked this journey with me.”
THE WOMAN BEHIND THE HEADPHONES
Ask Khosi what she is proudest of, and broadcasting will not top the list. She is a mother of five and grandmother of one — titles she holds above every other achievement. “My children inspire me every day,” she says. “Their belief in me reminds me why I continue learning, growing and striving for excellence. They celebrate every achievement, support me through every challenge and remind me that dreams remain possible at every stage of life.”
Khosi (Near left, in black) with friends — the same community spirit her parents’ shebeen once nurtured.
Her drive, she is quick to point out, was inherited. When her parents eventually closed the shebeen as the older children reached their teenage years, her mother didn’t slow down — she reinvented herself entirely, building a clothing business from nothing and becoming one of the most sought-after dressmakers in the community, sewing wedding gowns, school uniforms, church uniforms and outfits for every special occasion, right up until retirement. “I often say that if my mother had been born into today’s world, with access to opportunities and resources that were unavailable to her generation, she would have been a millionaire,” Khosi says. “Her resilience, creativity and work ethic remain one of my greatest inspirations.”
FULL CIRCLE
Looking back across all of it — the shebeen, the grandmother’s kitchen, the jazz elders, the HR boardrooms, the children she has raised — Khosi is clear that her radio journey did not begin the day she first put on headphones. “It began in my parents’ shebeen, in the records my family played, in the voices and laughter of regular patrons, in conversations that helped shape a nation, in the warmth of my grandmother’s home and, later, in the jazz sessions where Lucky and I found another family,” she says. “Jazz has never simply been music to me. It has been memory, community, history, love and home.”
So when Khosi Radebe leans into her microphone every Sunday morning and welcomes listeners to The Jazz Lounge, she is doing something bigger than announcing tracks. “I know I am doing far more than introducing songs,” she says. “I am honouring every person, every place and every lesson that helped shape me.”
It is, in the end, a story about how music raises a person — not once, but again and again, across a lifetime. And Khosi Radebe, headphones on, red light glowing, is still listening for the next lesson.
“My story is proof that music can shape lives, build communities and preserve history.”