The jazz community mourns the sudden passing of South African jazz trumpeter, Fezile “Feya” Faku who passed away on Monday 23 June 2025 at the age of 63. Feya was in Switzerland, about to perform for the week at Basel’s Bird’s Eye Club. Feya grew up in the township of Emaxambeni (New Brighton) in the Eastern Cape, a community that brought forth a number of great South African jazz musicians. Many of these players, like Patrick Pasha, Dudley Tito and Whitey Kulumani, took Feya under their wing and encouraged his early musical talent. He went on to study at the University of Natal in Durban, where Darius Brubeck had pioneered the country’s first school of jazz and popular music back in 1985. Soft-spoken, warm and thoughtful, Feya’s collaborators included Winston Mankunku Ngozi, Abdullah Ibrahim, and Bheki Mseleku.
What struck many younger players about Feya was the way in which he nurtured the next generation, enlisting them to his ensembles and touring with them, “paying it forward” so to speak. When asked about his experience being mentored by some of South Africa’s jazz finest, Feya said, “I guess they saw something in me so I’m like a keeper of that spirit in a way…the ‘chosen one’. That is why my music is about the elders. But now, the focus has changed. It’s more on the younger generation. Who has heard about sis Thandi Klaasen? Who has heard about Barney Rachabane? Some are alive, some are gone. It’s about the history. We have to look back in order to go forward.”
Here are some tributes about Feya from fellow musicians who were lucky to know him, whether on or off the bandstand.
Nduduzo Makhathini: It is with great sadness that we find ourselves in this situation as the music community. I started coming into contact with Mr Faku and his sound through his release of The Colours they Bring in the early 2000s. I was still a student then but we both had a shared fondness for Mr Bheki Mseleku who was my teacher. Naturally his music and way of life became our point of connection in terms of how we both conceived of musical composition as a result of being in the world.
Some years later I started playing in Mr Faku’s band, toured, recorded with him and became family friends. In the later years when I started my solo career, he then worked with younger musicians here at home but his music has always been in my heart and I hope that one can do something to remember his legacy in the very near future. In fact, I was happy to learn that he started playing with his son Bathabile whom I know from when he was really little. As the music community we are sending our deepest love to the entire Faku family.
Darius Brubeck: Feya was one of a talented cohort of students from New Brighton, near Port Elizabeth, who came to Durban to study jazz at the University of Natal in the early 80s. Zim Ngqawana was the first to arrive. One day Zim asked for a meeting in my office, and I surmised he needed help with something. Instead, he told me that there was a trumpet player in New Brighton who ‘deserves the same chance as I have.’ This was also true for bassist Lex Futshane and drummer Lulu Gontsana. They all came and suddenly Durban was a better place to study jazz. They were not yet registered students entitled to campus housing so, for a while, all four stayed in an annex to our house. When we sold the house, we all moved into a very large flat in an insalubrious grey area in Durban. During apartheid, Africans were not allowed to live in designated white areas, so we were the official renters. When Catherine and I moved out, they simply continued to live there with a lease in our name.
Feya was always extremely sensitive and empathetic and connected with people just by quietly being himself. Musically speaking, think Chet Baker or classic Miles Davis, vulnerable, subtly melancholic, understated yet agile. That’s what I used to say. However, listening to recent recordings made during his residencies at the Bird’s Eye Club in Basel with Swiss musicians, his compositions and instrumental voice seemed more energetic, with old and new influences crystalized into a strongly personal style.
It is some relief and a blessing that Feya left us in such a gentle manner. He was a very special person in my life and indeed in Cathy’s. A musician with soul.
Kesivan Naidoo: I am shattered. Absolutely broken. Another giant has left us – and with him, a piece of my heart, my past, and my musical soul.
Feya Faku passed away peacefully in his sleep, but the silence he leaves behind is deafening. This is the third mentor, friend, and musical elder I’ve lost in as many weeks. And yet, this one cuts particularly deep. Feya wasn’t just a collaborator or a comrade in sound – he was family. Someone I looked up to, learned from, and shared a rare spiritual connection with on and off the bandstand.
Just weeks ago, Feya flew down to Cape Town, just to attend my concert at the Baxter. I was moved to tears seeing him in the audience. That’s who he was – generous with his time, unwavering in his support, deeply committed to the people he cared about, and never one to seek the spotlight, though he shone so brightly in it.
We played together many times over the years – gigs that turned into conversations without words, where the music spoke louder than language ever could. I remember one particular set at The Orbit where we locked into a groove so deep it felt like we were inside each other’s breath. Playing with Feya was like plugging into a current older and wiser than any of us — ancestral, grounded, and free.
His horn had a tone that could slice through steel or soothe like a balm. His phrasing was pure poetry. But more than that, his presence on stage was always deeply human – sincere, soulful, and humble.
Losing Feya reminds me – again – of the fragility of this life. How transient everything is. And how important it is to live fully in the now. To tell the people we love that we love them. To make music that matters. To create the future, we want to live in – because tomorrow is never promised.
Feya, thank you for your wisdom, your sound, your guidance, your laughter. Thank you for being there when it mattered. You gave so much. You gave it all.
Go well, beloved elder. May your spirit soar and your music echo through all eternity.
East London/eMonti, Eastern Cape, 2022. Awaiting photo credit.
Benjamin Jephta: I first met Bra Feya when I was still in high school, during a music camp when I was 16 years old, that would change the course of my life. It was there that he first ignited my love and deep appreciation for South African jazz. With a horn in his hand and wisdom in his spirit, he opened up a world that I’ve been chasing ever since.
Bra Feya wasn’t just a master musician—he was a gentle, generous mentor. His presence commanded respect, but his humility and warmth made you feel like you belonged. In so many ways, he planted the seeds for generations of musicians to come, and I count myself lucky to be one of them.
My tour with his quartet in Sweden is some of my fondest music memories. We’ve lost yet another great teacher and voice of our music. But what he gave us lives on—in the phrasing we carry, in the sound of our horns, in the stories we tell through our music.
Thank you, Bra Feya. You gave us more than you could know.
Keenan Ahrends: Bra Feya invited me into his musical space in 2021 while I was on a Pro Helvetia artist residency in Switzerland. He usually didn’t use guitar in his music and so when he invited me on board to play, I felt extremely grateful to have the opportunity to learn from him. We played a few concerts and one of them was a recording and is released as ‘Feya Faku Sextet Live at the Birds Eye’. We played together since that time on various occasions. He pushed me to go further in the music when we played together on stage. He would often shout “more, more” when I was ending off my solos – always so encouraging. He taught me the importance of phrasing and swinging when interpreting his music. Bra Feya’s sound was so distinctive, and his compositions so lyrical and deceptively complex. He always mentioned the hidden triplet that was present and a strong driving force in some of his compositions and I tried to absorb this. I will miss him forever and cherish the times we shared on and off the stage.
Shane Cooper: Bra Feya Faku was an incredible musician, composer, and thinker. With a sound that was truly distinct and inimitable. He was a master of his craft and had a passion for music that ran deep. Feya was very present and influential in the multi- generational community of South African jazz and left a powerful mark in history.
Bokani Dyer: Fezile Feya Faku, known to us younger than him as ‘Bra Feya’ was a shining light in South African Jazz and a custodian who connected generations. In his younger days he worked with greats like Bheki Mseleku, Abdullah Ibrahim and Winston Mankunku Ngozi and would often speak about his time working with them and relay stories and lessons he learned from them.
For me, personally, he was a close friend and mentor who I first met at age eight when he was working in a band with my father. In recent years I was in his regular band and from the time I spent with him, I got to know him on and off stage. His way was gentle but steadfast. He approached music with a spirit of servitude and reverence and often said to us “No one is bigger than the music”. This is probably the most enduring memory I will carry forward. Someone who surrendered themselves to the music with the utmost humility. He played hard and passionately and wrote the most memorable melodies. In some ways, he is not gone because he has made an indelible mark, giving so much beautiful music to the world coded with history and culture. He is a voice that will be remembered.
Fezile “Feya” Faku. Born Emaxambeni (New Brighton) , Port Elizabeth. 6 June 1962. Died Basel, Switzerland 23 June 2025. In sadness.
