Kyla-rose Smith is an acclaimed performer, violinist, and multimedia artist. She is best known  her work as violinist and backing singer with Freshlyground, South Africa's premier Afropop band. She has toured extensively inside and beyond South  Africa  with Freshlyground, who have garnered many awards including seven South African Music Awards (SAMA) awards, an MTV Europe Award, and four METRO awards. Kyla was also a recipient of the Glamour Woman of the Year Award.

As a member of South Africa's top touring band, Kyla developed a keen interest in the art of performance and how musicians interact with their audience through the medium of  sound and music, while bridging cultural divides. Since leaving Freshlyground, she has established herself as an emerging multi-media artist. Her current projects engage with aural and visual dimensions of contemporary society.

Kyla is the co-artistic director and artist facilitator of Hear Be Dragons, a  sound  mapping project and artistic exchange program. Hear Be Dragons is a community based creativity initiative to get young people thinking about sound and the city and the way these influence our quality of life, perceptions of history and memory, and notions of identity. HBD has led programs with youth in Cape Town and New York. More recently, HBD led a  program with youth and the elderly in collaboration with The Hillbrow Theatre in Johannesburg that concluded with a performance of a new work - Seventy Sounds Between You and Me - at renowned South African artist William Kentridge’s Centre for the Less Good Idea.

Kyla has featured as a violinist on the recordings of a number of well-known South African and African musicians including, Derek Gripper, Gito Baloi, Funsho Ogundipe, Nneka, Bongeziwe Mabandla, Lark, electronic producer Markus Wormstorm and Oh Mercy.

In 2014, Kyla was selected as a OneBeat Fellow to collaborate for one month  with  artists around the world. OneBeat is an incubator for music-based social entrepreneurship, supported by the US State Department, where innovative musicians from around the world launch collaborative projects designed to make a positive impact on local and global communities. Since her fellowship, Kyla has joined the Found Sound Nation team as the director of newly formed non-profit label Found Sound Records, as well as the programs manager for the celebrated cultural exchange program OneBeat, where she programs and curates a yearly residency and tour for 25 global musicians, that takes place  in  various locations around the United States.

Kyla has curated and produced a variety of contemporary artistic pieces from South Africa and beyond. She co-produced a multi-media performance for Cape Town’s TEDx conference, The Unbinding and has curated performances across a range of genres for artistic events in South Africa. In 2017, Kyla produced an interactive exhibition and performative installation, The Ouroborium at TED 2017 and Moog Fest. She is also currently an associate producer for THE OFFICE performing arts + film, working on The Mile-Long Opera, a city-wide public engagement project that brought together 1,000 singers for a performance of a new choral work by Pulitzer prize winning composer David Lang, and Theatre of War’s production of Antigone in Ferguson. She is currently associate producer for William Kentridge’s The Head & The Load.

AWARDS

  • SAMA AWARD, Best Group, Take Me To The Dance, May 2013

  • SHARED INTEREST, Next Generation Award, March 2013

  • GLAMOUR WOMAN OF THE YEAR, 2011

  • SAMA AWARD, Best Adult Contemporary English Album for Radio Africa, May 2011

  • SAMA AWARD, Album of the Year, Ma Cheri, May 2008

  • SAMA AWARD, Best Duo/Group, Ma Cheri, May 2008

  • SAMA AWARD, Best Adult Contemporary English Album, Ma Cheri, May 2008

  • CHANNEL O AWARD, Best African Band, 2008

  • O MUSIC VIDEO AWARDS NIGERIA, African Video of the Year for Pot Belly, April 2008

  • GOOD HOPE FM SA, Best performing Group, September 2008

  • METRO FM AWARD, Best Group, November 2007

  • METRO FM AWARD, Best Album, November 2007

  • METRO FM AWARD, Best African Pop Album, November 2007

  • MTV EUROPE AWARD, Best African Act, November 2006

  • METRO FM AWARD, Best African Pop Album, November 2005

notable performances

  • San Francisco Jazz, June 2015

  • Ottowa Jazz Festival, June 2015

  • BB Kings, New York City, June 2015

  • Montreal Jazz Festival, Montreal, Canada, June 2015

  • Apollo Theatre . Africa Now Festival, New York City, USA, March 2013

  • TEDX Cape Town, 2012

  • Montreal Jazz Festival . Montreal, Canada, July 2011

  • Vancouver Folk Festival . Vancouver, Canada, July 2011

  • Central Park SummerStage . New York City, USA, June 2011

  • FIFA World Cup Final Closing Ceremony, Johannesburg, South Africa July 2010

  • Luanda Jazz Festival . Luanda, Angola, July 2010

  • Paleo Festival . Nyon, Switzerland, July 2010

  • Festival Hammemet. Tunis, Tunisia, July 2010

  • FIFA Kickoff Concert, Johannesburg, South Africa June 2010

  • Rio Loco Festival . Toulouse, France, June 2010

  • Africa Festival . Wurzburg, Germany, May 2010

  • World Economic Forum. Davos, Switzerland, January 2010

  • Jazz Music Festival , Shanghai. The Republic of China, October 2009

  • FIFA World Cup 2010 Final Draw, Cape Town, December 2009

  • Radio City Music Hall, New York City, USA, July 2009

  • Celebrate Brooklyn Festival , Brooklyn, NY, USA, July 2009

  • Festival Nuits D’ Afrique, Montreal, Canada, July 2009

  • Hague Jazz Festival , The Netherlands, May 2009

  • Cape Town International Jazz Festival, Cape Town, April 2009

  • Rome Auditorium , Rome, Italy, November 2008

  • AVO Sessions , Basel, Switzerland, November 2008

  • Barbican Centre, London, United Kingdom, November 2008

  • Theatre Royal Carre, The Netherlands, September 2008

  • Toast Festival , Kensington, United Kingdom, September 2008

  • Arrezzowave Festival , Livorno, Italy, July 2008

  • Zeltival , Karlsruhe, Germany, July 2008

  • Kultursummer Festival , Oldenburg, Germany, July 2008

  • Salisbury Festival , United Kingdom, June 2008

  • Roots in Ooster Park, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, June 2008

  • Lugano Festival De Jazz, Mendrisio, Switzerland, June 2008

  • Mawa zine Festival , Rabat, Morocco, May 2008

  • Spring Festival , Cairo, Egypt, May 2008

  • Harare International Festival , Harare, Zimbabwe, May 2008

  • Lagos International Jazz Festival , Lagos, Nigeria, April 2008

  • Maputo International Jazz Festival , Maputo, Mozambique, April 2008

  • 46664 Nelson Mandela HIV Fund, Johannesburg, December 2007

  • Desmond Tutu HIV-Foundation Benefit Concert with Vusi Mahlasela, September 2006, with Sipho Hotstix August 2008,

  • Jazz Café, London, United Kingdom, July 2006

  • FIFA World Cup Handover Ceremony, Berlin, Germany, June 2006

  • Branderburger Tor FIFA 04 event, Berlin, Germany, June 2006

  • Cannes Film Festival , NFVF, Cannes, France, May 2006

  • Aichi Expo, Nagoya, Japan, March 2005

  • Pukkelpop Festival , Belgium, August, 2005 Berlin, Germany 2004