Kimberleigh Venty was something of an enigma to us. To be honest, I can't even recall howni stumbled across her Instgram feed, but once I did I was intrigued.

As these things always go, the more connections I found between her and VERVE, the more I was itching to speak to her.

After the release of her single New Direction, and her role in the Sportscene x Adidas Collab, I decided to finally jump the gun and reach our for an interview.

So - tell us the story of Kimberleigh Venty

I'm gonna try and simplify things but the gist of it is that I am the last daughter of five children . My siblings, I guess they were tasked with doing the things like becoming doctors and lawyers and accountants, and so I was afforded what I would say is the privilege of being interested in music from a very young age and being very much supported by my parents, my siblings, my community, and my church o the path to becoming a musician.

I auditioned to go to the Tygerberg Children's Choir by the time I was 10 and kind of moved to Cape Town when I was 10. So I've been in Cape Town since then and I would consider myself a Capetonian, even though I’m from Malmesbury. As much as I feel like I wasn't born here, I was definitely bred here.

Even at that age, I knew I wanted to become a better singer. I learned a lot through classical music and singing in a choir as a community. Then I went on to also join the South African Youth choir. When I was in high school, I decided that I wanted to do jazz music. I went to an arts focused school in Athlone, Alexander Sinton and when I was in grade 8, I was doing visual art, butfor the life of me, I sucked. I was terrible. It just wasn't working out for me. But they offered jazz music as a subject jazz music at the school and that wasn't anything that I had ever done. My dad was playing a lot of jazz in the house, but I was a classical singer at that point.

I ended up joining the jazz class because I was going to fail my classes if I didn't join a different artistic major. So I took my chances with it, and was completely enamoured with jazz within one term

What was the Sunday Afternoon album in your house? What was your dad always playing?

I mean, there was a lot. It could have been the Carpenters, we could have been listening to Earth Wind and Fire, you know, we could have been listening to The Whispers - anything. My dad's music vocabulary is so broad and I have to thank him for it because in the end it became my musical language. So when I eventually fell in love with jazz, my dad felt like he'd won the lotto.

Yeah, so I did go on to study jazz at UCT - jazz vocals.

What was that experience like?

It was super complex. Yeah, I think it taught me a lot. It also, like, plugged me into the community of musicians that I play with even to this day. And it broadened my scope of intellect in music. It also made me realise I'm learning so much, but the more I learn, the more the less I know.

It's totally different to the world of classical music. But I mean on our campus, we had the opera singers right there. We had the classical guys in the practice rooms there with us. Even the African music faculty, they would be there. So there was all of that bleeding into my practice room, kind of influencing what I want to do. I didn't start writing my own music until maybe the second year. I've been writing my own music for about eight years now.

How would you describe your sound? Both within the convention of genre, and outside of it, if you had to use a mood or a time of day, or a colour?

I would say super eccentric, super sensual, leaning on RnB and pop, but heavily influenced by jazz music. I consider myself very much genre bending, and so I can't really say that this is what I do or that is what I do. But I am heavily influenced by the jazz scene today, you know, whether it's my peers or whatever's happening in the jazz community right now. And I don't think that's ever gonna change, you know?

If I had to use a time of day, I would say it's from dusk till dawn, you know, like when it's dark, but the birds are chirping outside. The morning is waking up. You don't have any visual indication because it's still dark, but you hear the birds and know the day is on the way. The birds have started. So that kind of that quiet of the morning, where the sun is coming up

So from UCT you went on to release Practice Room, your critically acclaimed first project. What was it like putting your first work out there?

I wanted to call it Practice Room for a specific reason, because I know that I would look back at it one day and you recognise all of the things that I could have done better. But also being in that practice room, how much I was influenced by everything that was happening around me - you know, the musicians, the people. I mean, I wasn't just working with musicians on Practice Room. I was also working with people that I would call wordsmiths. I appreciate people that are quickwitted with words, poetic in a sense. It helps me write better.

So yeah, that was actually a scary experience because it was my first, you know, EP.. Yeah, but it was exciting. Yeah, it was super exciting.

After Practice Room you took a hiatus - what was the reason for that?

It started in lockdown, the world kinda shut down, so it was important to me at that time to pivot - we all had to find something else to do. So I decided to go into business with my ex-partner, we opened up a sneaker store. And we had a lot of success with that. I think I always was feeling an itch that I needed to scratch. And now I'm at a point where I feel like the music scene is once again bubbling up. Especially live music.

I was saying to my friends, I've been waiting a while for this. I've been kind of seeing that it's almost like the rise of the musician. You know what I mean? The rise of the painter, of the niche artists

So I wanted to get back into music. I've always wanted to get back into music. And even when I was on hiatus, I was working on my EP. It’s been a long time in the works. I'm so happy with the product.

Tell us about the new project - What is it called?

I’m releasing my second EP at the end of October, it’s called The Oracle.

Yeah. It's a five track situation, and it's live music based, but there's also produced music. I'm trying to bridge the gap, you know, between digital production and live music. And I think it's beautifully done. I'm very excited about it.

Why the name The Oracle? What are you prophesying?

I guess sometimes I just write music, but I could write a hypothetical. I'm really good at writing hypotheticals. Sometimes it's hard for me to write exactly what I'm dealing with right now. But I could write a story putting myself in someone else's shoes so easily.

So I was doing a lot of that. I was just writing some things. And I didn't have a project name at the start, I just had a bunch of songs. And as I’m getting ready to release my EP in 2025 after working on it for about four years, every single song that I picked, every single line has come to pass in my life. So the project is kind of my oracle. It’s my story.

So you weren’t writing a hypothetical, you were writing a prophecy?

It was, you know? But that's what I've noticed - the things that I say with my mouth materialise. Especially the things that I put in my music, you know? Now with writing music going forward, I think I'm a lot more intentional with what I write, with what I choose to engage in. Whether it's themes of joy or themes of love, or whatever it might be. I'm a little bit more thoughtful about what I write now, knowing what I know.

Growing from Practice Room which was so new and scary to you, to writing The Oracle which has turned into the prophecy of your life, how has your writing process changed or improved?

You know the funniest thing about that is that when I was singing classical music, I almost always felt like I didn't quite fit. Because when I was doing classical music, I think the opinion of some of my mentors was that I had a very pop voice. Romantic or pop voice, not quite classical. And then going on to doing jazz music, now my voice is not quite jazz. It's still a bit pop, you know? So I always kind of felt like I didn't quite fit, you know?

I'm good at assimilating. And being artistically correct, whatever the genre, but my voice is my voice. My sound is my sound. So now I'm a lot more comfortable with not fitting. In fact, I don't want to fit in.

I used to get so uncomfortable when people asked me, oh, so what's your genre? I would fumble, I seemed like I didn’t know what I was doing, you know what I mean? But I’m comfortable, because there's a place for me there in the uncertainty, that's exactly where I sit well, where I belong.

So that kind of strengthens the ideas that I have, you know, it kind of makes me more comfortable to say what I have to say. And with time I think the musical structures have become a little bit more complex because I’ve been growing and learning.

I’ve noticed with most of our shows that you have quite a stage presence when you perform, especially the look and feel of the show. So I'm curious as to what goes into your performances, from your side?

To me the music is probably the easy part. And also the type of people that I work with make it easy. I'm so dependent on the guys that I work with - I can write anything, but it’ll just play all day in my head if it wasn't for the musicians that I work with.

I work with an amazing group of people. And not always necessarily the same band - That's why it's ‘Kimtjie and Friends’. You never really know who the friends are going to be. Could be anyone. That's the fun part.

It also keeps me on my toes, playing with new musicians all the time, and different combinations of people. It keeps things interesting. It keeps things fresh.

Aside from that, I've also noticed that people listen with their eyes so that's what I've recently started to incorporate more into my shows, a visual element that goes along with the music that's already of such pristine quality. And the combination of both, I guess is, what you see

Also I'm comfortable up there you know. I might not be the most comfortable speaking to people in social settings, but when I’m on stage, that’s where I’m at home

Performance vs writing - which do you favour, or which speaks more to you?

I have to think of this from a musician's perspective. I'm better at performing. So that means I need to do a lot more work with songwriting. Not to say that I'm not good, but that's like the area which I need to develop more, you know. Sometimes when you have a specific songwriting style, you might stick to or assimilate that into every musical structure you work on

So I'm trying to not do that. I’m trying to learn from other people, to see what I can pick up from the people that I make music with?

Having said that, what are your writing influences?

Funnily enough, I really am influenced by pop writers.

Really?

I think it's so simple, but it works, you know what I mean? Just like the combination of words, you know, the way that words are structured. So I'm really into pop writers right now, as opposed to complex jazz musicians. But I guess that's also because even within the jazz structure, I used to always love singing a good ballad. And those ballads, those are pop lyric combinations. You know, very well written, just simple and sweet.

Yeah, I'd say that's kind of the vibe right now. Even my latest single, New Direction, takes a bit of a more pop approach even though it is like AfroBeats

What kind of sound are we expecting from the new EP?

I would definitely say Soul/jazz, you know?.

How do you define soul music?

It's so broad. It says deep as the ocean, man. I think it's the music that sounds warm, but spiritual. It almost sounds like church, but it's not that, you know?

To wrap up, let me ask you the VERVE Question - what’s your opinion of the current cultural landscape and where do you see it going from here?

I don't want to use the word oversaturated, because it has a bad connotation, but I think that the Cape Town scene is…absolutely in great hands. Especially whether it's my peers and where we are right now, or even the younger generation are doing some things that are forward thinking, things that are helping the landscape in Cape Town change. I was saying to you guys, I feel like we’re in the era of the rise of the musicians.

But it's also because culture is shifting towards having authentic, as opposed to having more authentic brand ambassadors. I mean Kujenga did the clothing line with Art Club & Friends among so much else that they’re doing to shift the culture.

So I feel like if we keep going in the direction that we are, we would have no problems. I really do hope and pray that the infrastructure would become a lot more strengthened because that's the mission. That's the work we're doing right now, right?

So that's really the only thing. There are too many amazing musicians, doing too many amazing things like, we don't have the infrastructure for it. We do not. And that would be the difference.

How would we build the infrastructure?

Ooh. That is the golden question. I sit around and think about this a lot. Cause at the base of it, we need institutions to be plugged in, you know what I mean? We need venues to be plugged in. We need those types of people to see the value in the musicians.

I don't know, if there was any type of way for us to unionise, that would be great too. I mean we’ve tried not to, but it’s getting to that point you know.

I promise you, all musicians and artists, like we sit around and we ask ourselves, we ask each other this question. We know the value of the people that we work with. It's insane. We have world class musicians and artists on every street corner. Like, if the world had even known the type of things that goes on here. But the goal would be to get institutions, venues, I mean, even government - That's a long chat, but you know ideally, You know what I mean? If we're at that type of support, there is nothing that we could not do. And I'm not just talking about music, I'm talking about letting me know every single facet of South African brilliance, you know, whether it’s sport, art, music. We would all have the same prize

Catch Kimberleigh Venty live at The Pink Room this Thursday the 30th, for her re-introduction as an artist and the debut performance of there new EP, The Oracle.

Sani Lockeheart will be featuring as an opening act, and rumour has it that there will be a surprise guest as well

Tickets are available at this link

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