TEEKS Brings Indigenous Soul Sound to South Africa; First Live Dates in Durban and Johanne

Te Karehana Gardiner-Toi, performing as TEEKS, lands in Durban on 28 August for his first continental performances, followed by Johannesburg on 30 August. The New Zealand soul artist is not arriving cold. Tracks including First Time and Remember Me have already circulated among South African listeners, building an audience he has never addressed in person. The foundation of TEEKS' artistic practice is inseparable from Māori heritage. That inheritance structures his songwriting, his live performance methodology, and the philosophical framework through which he engages with the world. He positions music as ceremony rather than entertainment, a concentrated exchange of energy between artist and audience that produces something beyond the conventional concert experience. This understanding of performance as sacred space shapes how he approaches each show, adapting to venue dynamics and crowd composition while maintaining emotional coherence throughout. TEEKS traces the connection South African listeners have made with his introspective soul sound to the genre's origins in African and black cultural traditions. He describes himself as an introvert who accesses creative material through internal reflection, drawing on songs he believes already exist and bringing them into realisation through performance. That inward orientation has required deliberate work around emotional expression. Growing up in a country colonised by Britain, he absorbed cultural conditioning that discouraged men from expressing feelings or acknowledging vulnerability. Through conscious effort over time, he has begun reclaiming ancestral knowledge that allows masculine and feminine qualities to coexist within himself, viewing softness not as weakness but as essential to authentic self-expression. By contrast, his public life took an unexpected turn in June 2026, when a single titled My Boy prompted widespread speculation about his sexuality. He responded directly, issuing a statement on Facebook explaining that coming out publicly was never something he felt necessary. His sense of identity, he wrote, derives from a culture rich in origin stories, lineage, and connection to land and spirit. He argued that colonisation has corrupted indigenous ideas around sexuality and manhood, perpetuating a false narrative that emotional or sexual fluidity diminishes masculinity. Security in sexuality, he contended, is not the absence of feminine or masculine qualities but their coexistence, and the absence of fear. His debut album Something to Feel established him as a benchmark for contemporary soul. His newer material, including the single Red Light, signals clear artistic evolution. The years between that first record and his current work have involved substantial life experience, trauma, and healing. Where Something to Feel leaned predominantly melancholic and yearning, his emerging work reflects a different chapter. He no longer feels compelled to sing sad songs exclusively, drawing instead from the full spectrum of human experience, including joy. He describes the new material as more mature, lyrically and melodically sophisticated, spoken from genuine experience without restraint. Holding space for collective grief, love, and healing night after night requires rigorous preparation. He prioritises physical health through nutrition and sleep, combined with visualisation and meditation to remain grounded. Legacy matters deeply to him. He hopes his music communicates to future generations something about his origins and the era in which he lived, conveying the purity of human experience through authenticity and tenderness. Once released into the world, his songs become shared experiences where audiences discover their own connections (what he describes as a beautiful ecosystem of feedback and creative reciprocity). Whether the South African shows deepen that ecosystem or reshape it entirely remains the open question he carries onto the stage in Durban this week.