Thando Zide.

Thando Zide’s musical journey begins, as she puts it, “before birth” as she was born into musical families, with chorister parents, is a 24-year-old born and raised in Soweto, Johannesburg.

Constantly surrounded by music and a music-loving family, she quickly assimilated into such a life, exposed to her parents' choir rehearsals and sonic family gatherings, Zide’s love for music was inevitable. She attended the National School of the Arts in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, which she describes to be a place where the world of music opened up to her, and her love for it was nurtured into a passion. She joined the school’s orchestra, choir, and later formed an A Capella group together with friends, performing at community concerts and at the Joburg Theatre at the school’s annual festivals for the duration of her high school career.

Although Zide went on to major in Social Work at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2018, she continued pursuing music. In 2019, she was a finalist in the Emirates Pursuit of Jazz competition, where her identity as an artist began to take shape. From this experience, she got immersed in the jazz world and acquainted herself.

With the incorporation of Contemporary RnB and Jazz into her African sound, Zide not only aims to keep the integrity of African artistry alive in modern society, but also seeks to highlight its relevance in modern forms of artistic expression.