Listen To Your Footsteps

What does it mean to live a tapas life, to sample widely, to commit deeply, to keep becoming? Danielle Bowler has spent her life refusing neat labels, and in this conversation, she makes a powerful case for why she never needed one.
Writer, culture editor, researcher, musician, and now opera composer, Danielle joins Kojo Baffoe for a deeply personal conversation that moves from Ifafa Beach on KwaZulu-Natal’s south coast - her spiritual home - to the lecture halls of Rhodes University, the editorial spaces of Elle South Africa and EWN, the stages of the National Arts Festival, and ultimately into thedemanding, expansive world of opera.
She speaks candidly about retrenchment, reinvention, and the strange pressure of trying to answer life’s biggest questions in Johannesburg, a city that can both sharpen and scatter you. There’s also a powerful moment in the making of her opera, when writing the final lines brought her to tears because the characters had grown beyond the page and into something fully alive.
Together, they explore the myth of the jack-of-all-trades, the actual weight of that old saying, the beauty and brutality of building a life in Joburg as an outsider, the role of Twitter-era community, Black feminist thought, and why Danielle believes opera may be the only form vast enough to hold all of who she is.
This one is for anyone who has ever been told they do too much — and is finally learning that maybe they’re simply whole.
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This first LTYF Moments episode pulls a powerful excerpt from my conversation with ballerina and broadcaster Kitty Phetla, exploring discipline, pain and poise in the pursuit of mastering a craft.
LTYF Moments is a new weekly Memorable Moments series, sharing focused highlights from longer Listen To Your Footsteps episodes.

João da Fonseca, better known as J Something, lead singer of Mi Casa, chef, and creative entrepreneur, sits down with host Kojo Baffoe for one of the most honest, joyful, and soul-stirring conversations the Listen to Your Footsteps podcast has produced.
Born in Portimão, Portugal, raised in the Eastern Cape, and now 15 years deep into one of South Africa's most beloved musical journeys, J'Something opens up about identity, the meaning of home, the magic of serendipity, and why his greatest fear is simply not paying attention to life.
From a chance encounter at a Joburg rooftop party that birthed Mi Casa, to the prophetess who told a 15-year-old boy that God wanted him to explore music, this episode is rich with the unexpected moments that shape extraordinary lives.
J'Something also talks candidly about his evolving creative process, his solo album-in-progress, the philosophy behind the Mi Casa name, the brotherhood of three that has survived 15 years intact, and why cooking became a love language that turned into a career.
This is a conversation about time, presence, gratitude, and the quiet courage it takes to stay joyful in a noisy world.
🎧 Listen. Reflect. Stay present.
#JSomething #MiCasa #ListenToYourFootsteps #KojoBaffoe #SouthAfricanMusic #PodcastZA #AfricanCreatives #HouseMusicSA #Entrepreneurship #Mindfulness #Gratitude #Fatherhood #Creativity #SoulfulConversations #AfricanPodcast

Writer, documentary filmmaker, photographer, conceptual copywriter, and author of Patient 12A, Lesedi Molefi carries more titles than most, but at the heart of all of them is a single, unshakeable ethic: the restoration of dignity.
In this rich conversation with host Kojo Baffoe, Lesedi reflects on a childhood lived across cities, a mother who used books, music, and protest marches as tools of political education, and the turbulent creative journey that led him from a photography studio to a mental health clinic - and ultimately to one of the most quietly radical memoirs in recent South African literature.
Together, Kojo and Lesedi interrogate the pressure to monetise passion, the forgotten art of the hobby, what it means to be a "work in progress" memoirist, the difference between survivingand thriving, and why the world outside the clinic may be far less sane than the world within it.
They also discuss the writing of Patient 12A - why Lesedi almost didn't publish it, the frustrating public reception that reduced a nuanced work to "Black man has feelings," and why truth, even when it's complicated, is still an act of love.
And Lesedi teases his next book.
This one goes deep. Don't miss it.
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#ListenToYourFootsteps #LesediMolefi #Patient12A #BlackMenWrite #SouthAfricanPodcast #AfricanCreatives #MentalHealthAfrica #BlackCreatives #Memoir #Storytelling #AfricanWriters #KojoBaffoe #Podcast #BlackAuthors #CreativesOfAfrica

Nontokozo Madonsela — marketing executive, podcast host, and co-founder of the So Fine Podcast Network — joins Kojo Baffoe for a deeply honest and wide-ranging conversation. From growing up in KZN as the eldest of five and carrying the weight of being a deputy parent, to leaving accounting behind because it didn't "run through her veins," Nontokozo shares the moments that shaped her into one of South Africa's most distinctive voices in marketing and media.

She opens up about being dismissed, rebuilding her confidence at Momentum, and how her 'word' of that particular year 'Rise' became a lifeline. She talks about navigating the tension between maverick leadership and corporate systems, what it truly means to be a collaborative marketer, and why she launched Cheers to Failure — a podcast no one thought she should make.

This is a conversation about alignment, courage, the creator economy, and what it looks like to do everything afraid and do it anyway.

🎙️ Listen. Subscribe. Leave a review — it helps more people find these conversations.

#ListenToYourFootsteps #NontokozoMadonsela #CheersToFailure #AfricanPodcast #BlackExcellence #MarketingAfrica #SouthAfricanPodcast #WomenInBusiness #PersonalGrowth #Storytelling #CreatorEconomy #PodcastLife #AfricanWomen #SoFinePodcastNetwork #Leadership #Resilience