His father’s son: Long before the late nights, the studio sessions, the collaborations and the crowds, there was a father and a young boy, sitting
together in a room where jazz records filled the air like a second atmosphere. Photo: Supplied
Before the hiatus, DJ Biza had already carved a quiet but undeniable space for himself within the Amapiano landscape.
Known for tracks such as Hade and Yebo Lapho, he built a reputation as a producer whose sound carried both youthful energy and emotional depth.
Born and raised in Soshanguve, Pretoria, he entered the world of music production at just 12 years old, experimenting on his phone long before he had access to professional equipment.
His early rise was shaped by collaboration, curiosity, and a natural instinct for rhythm — a combination that made him one of the most intriguing young talents emerging from Pretoria’s bustling musical ecosystem.
There is a quiet kind of courage in returning to the world after a long absence, especially when the world you return to is one that remembers you by sound.
For DJ Biza, the young producer whose work once travelled rapidly across social media, the past two years have been a period of stillness, recalibration, and reconnection. And now, with the release of Feelings and Jazz 3, his silence has finally found its language again.
“I had to take some time off to find myself and the music again,” he says.
Biza’s story begins in a place many artists seldom speak about without softening: the home. Long before the late nights, the studio sessions, the collaborations and the crowds, there was a father and a young boy, sitting together in a room where jazz records filled the air like a second atmosphere.
Those melodies. sometimes lively, sometimes mournful, always sincere were the very first teachers in his musical life.
He recalls them not just as sounds, but as emotional anchors, guiding him toward a relationship with music that felt deeply personal.
“My first encounter with music was through my dad,” he reflects quietly. “The jazz he used to play for me… that’s what made me fall in love with sound.”
And so it feels fitting, perhaps inevitable, that one of his new releases, Jazz 3, is dedicated to the man who shaped his ear. The track becomes more than a song; it becomes a conversation across time, a way of honouring a lineage that started long before he knew he’d become a producer.
Growing up in Soshanguve, Biza’s musical curiosity blossomed early. He was only 12 years old, a Grade 6 child with more eagerness than resources when he began producing music on his phone.
While many producers speak of studios and equipment as their entry points, Biza’s story is one of improvisation: making do, creating worlds within limitations, tapping into a hunger that outgrew the small screen in his hand.
By the time he reached high school, he had grown into the craft with a confidence that attracted others like him — young, imaginative, searching. He became part of The Piano Meditators (TPM), a collective that used social media as both a megaphone and a diary.
“We were a group of young cool and popular guys who just loved music” he chuckles.
Their sound travelled not because they pursued virality, but because they mirrored the pulse of the youth around them.
TPM gave him not just visibility, but community. And from that community, a fan base began to take shape and people who recognised something authentic in the way he carried rhythm.
His true breakthrough came in 2021, a milestone year that introduced him to the mainstream. That was also when he met JazziQ, one of Amapiano’s most respected DJs and producers.
But even as he stepped into bigger rooms, DJ Biza maintained a creative process that was deeply intuitive. He does not plan songs in advance. He does not map out features before the first chord exists.
Instead, he follows the emotional state of the day, letting sensation guide structure.
First comes the chord progression – quiet, skeletal, foundational. Then the bassline, the heartbeat of any Amapiano track. Only after the music begins to breathe does he think about lyrics or possible collaborators.
“I don’t really plan,” he explains. “Ideas just come naturally as I work. It depends on how I’m feeling that day, whether I’m happy or going through something. It always translates into music.”
This is how Feelings and Jazz 3 came to exist: not as strategic releases engineered for the charts, but as emotional documents of the days he created them. Feelings is pulsing and spirited, full of the warmth that comes when an artist reclaims their voice.
Jazz 3 is gentler, more contemplative, carrying a tenderness that makes its dedication unmistakable.
“The music will speak,” he says. “The art will speak.”
And it does. In the way the melodies stretch, in the ease with which the chords unfurl, in the nostalgia stitched into every note, one hears a young man returning to himself.
Perhaps that is why these releases feel more intimate than celebratory, more grounded than triumphant. They are the product of someone who has listened inwardly for two years and is finally ready to let the world listen with him.