A rugby revolution is headed to Loftus Versfeld on Saturday, 14 March, when the Vodacom Bulls tackle the DHL Stormers in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship’s famous North-South Derby.

And with it there will come a music revolution as well, with the first live AI-enhanced music performance at Loftus.

Jakkals Vibes will make his debut at Loftus during this derby, showcasing the arrival of what has been described as one of the most disruptive and talked-about new forces in South African music.

With over 16 million streams on Spotify, more than five million plays on Apple Music, over 22 million views on YouTube, upwards of 88 000 TikTok followers, an appearance at Afrikaans is Groot, and multiple covers of his songs by established Afrikaans artists, Jakkals Vibes is speaking loudly into the hearts of music lovers.

The question is why?

“People think it’s just pressing a button. But they’re asking the wrong question. The real question is, ‘How did this song make it into the Maroela Top 20?’”

The song in question is Heeltemal Stom, which became the first AI-assisted production to make it into the Maroela Media Afrikaanse Top-20.

As Jakkals Vibes explains, “It wasn’t an algorithm that wrote it. It wasn’t a machine that felt it. It was a songwriter who chose to use artificial intelligence as a production instrument, not as a replacement for creativity, but as a tool to amplify it.”

It’s perhaps no coincidence that if ever there was a medium perfectly suited to showing the human side to AI, then it is music. Music has always transcended normal boundaries.

“I was contacted by a woman who became a quadriplegic after an accident. Before that, she was a musician. She played guitar. Music was part of her identity. She asked me to turn her lyrics into a song. I write my own lyrics, so that’s not something I do. But I understood what she was really asking for. She didn’t need someone to create for her. She needed her voice back.

“I walked her through how to use AI as a production instrument, how to structure her ideas, shape the sound, refine the arrangement, and stay in control of her own creative direction. Step by step. Today she is releasing her own music.”

But he is quick to point out that she’s not doing so for any obvious commercial reasons.

“She has something more valuable, the restoration of her voice in a form that once felt permanently lost. That’s what technology can do when it’s used with intention and humanity. Technology serves the story. Not the other way around.”

Jakkals Vibes relates several stories of people who’ve told him how his music has touched them.

A woman who contacted him and explained how she had lost the will to even stand because of illness, and found strength again through his music. People who’ve sent him messages of how they’ve played his songs at funerals and at hospital beds. Parents who have lost children and found solace in his lyrics.

“That’s not about numbers. That’s not about trends. That’s impact. That’s why Jakkals Vibes exists. The philosophy runs deeper than one song. AI music isn’t a click that suddenly goes viral. There’s a greater story behind it.”

This story lies within the very name – Jakkals Vibes.

“The name Jakkals Vibes was chosen deliberately. A jakkals represents instinct, adaptability, survival and quiet intelligence. It’s not the loudest animal in the veld, but it is always aware and always finding a way. ‘Vibes’ is not about identity, it’s about feeling. It’s the atmosphere when people connect without explanation.

“There’s also a subtle layer in the name. The second letter in Jakkals, ‘A’, and the second letter in Vibes, ‘I’, form AI. That’s not a gimmick. It’s a quiet truth beneath the surface. Human instinct first. Technology as the amplifier.”

Jakkals Vibes’ own story is of a childhood filled with music where an aunt wrote songs, an uncle played guitar, and he sang in the school choir. But his story first took him on a detour into the corporate sector.

“Music was always there, but it became something you push aside,” he says. “Then AI arrived, and suddenly I had a way to develop and produce the ideas in my head independently.”

After experimenting during the lockdown of Covid and at first focusing on English songs for an international audience, it was in July 2024 when Jakkals Vibes released his first Afrikaans AI-assisted production. About 18 months later, Heeltemal Stom made it into the Maroela Top-20.

The next frontier was a live performance.

“Everybody said AI cannot perform live. So we built a concept that could. In the process we created work, management, dancers, performers, technical crews, merchandise teams. This isn’t about replacing musicians. I would love every musician singing my songs live on stage. AI should enhance music, not threaten it.”

This is why the Loftus performance is such a seminal moment for Jakkals Vibes.

“It’s not just a stadium moment, but proof that a project built on human storytelling and enhanced by technology can move from digital platforms to physical stages. In the end, Jakkals Vibes is not about a face or a fixed persona. It’s about the feeling people recognise in themselves, a song at a braai, a voice at a funeral, a thought you didn’t know how to say out loud. It’s about love, loss, hope, solitude, the things people don’t always speak about.”

In the world of AI, Jakkals Vibes is an argument for something beautiful within technology. A message that counters the pervasive sentiment.

“Not that machines will replace us. But that, in the right hands, they can help us say what we have always felt.”

Issued By Michael Vlismas Media