Stone Jets on striking gold with ‘I Can’t Live Without You’: “We do things off the cuff”

Stone Jets is a musical partnership between bassist and vocalist Given Nkanyane, guitarist Manfred Klose and drummer Adrien Latgé. Known for their original sound and compositions, Stone Jets creates original toe-tapping music, wrapped in soul with a scattering of traditional elements.

Stone Jets combines the talents of Nkanyane’s distinct voice, Klose’s guitar prowess and Latgé's steady groove. The fusion of the three, together with their simple yet substantial melodic songwriting style and strong live performances, makes them popular crowd-pleasers from Africa to Europe and beyond, and has already seen them support James Morrison and Sugagabes.

The band’s Nkanyane and Klose – who were named the 2024 ambassadors for Yamaha Music London’s flagship UK store – reflect on how they met, why they came to the UK from South Africa to pursue their musical dreams and how their infectious song, I Can’t Live Without You, came to be.

When did you first meet and start making music together?

GN: Manfred is originally from Cape Town, and I'm from Johannesburg. I met Manfred in Cape Town when I was there for work. I had written some songs and wanted to produce them but I did not know if I wanted to do a solo thing or not – I just wanted to record songs. 

He was the session guitarist on the day and he played everything the way that I needed him to, but I had not even spoken to him about what the songs were about and where they needed to go. I just figured, ‘Wow; if this person understands my music and where I want to go with it without me speaking to him, imagine what would happen if I actually did tell him where we wanted to go!’.

MK: It was quite exciting because I still had a day job back then. I had come back from work and I was messaging my friend at the local studio. I said, 'Let me know if something happens; I'd love to pop in,’ and he said, ‘We need a guitarist’ – I was there within five minutes. 

That first night we did two or three songs and in the next few days we finished off the rest of the EP. It was a quick and very fluid experience. We created something unique.

When did you first realise your songwriting partnership was something special?

GN: I think it was when I moved from Johannesburg to Cape Town when we first wrote songs together. The first rehearsal session that we were supposed to have for the stuff that I had recorded actually turned out to be our first songwriting session. 

He started playing a chord progression, which ended up being a song that we still performed today called Wise Words. From that moment, I knew. Since then, we've been writing music from that simplistic and joyful place.

What are each of your musical inspirations and influences?

MK: I grew up with a classic rock background and later in my life when I started getting better at guitar, I realised I really like African guitar, especially West African guitar, and classical music. It was the free world of classic rock, African guitar and Baroque music which fused my guitar style. 

I still listen to that music to this day and get inspiration from that. That's the building blocks of what gives me my identity on the guitar.

GN: I grew up listening to so many things. I have a couple of siblings that are older than me and they obviously did a number on me by playing their influences [laughs], and being the last born, I always wanted to fit in. I had to listen to each and every single thing that they played and find a track that I liked so that we could see eye to eye. 

I listened to a lot of new age harpist music, Michael Bublé, Brenda Nokuzola Fassie, who's a huge artist from South Africa, Hugh Masekela, who's a massive jazz trumpeter in South Africa, Miriam Makeba, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, and a lot of classical music later on in life.

What made you decide to move to the UK?

GN: I mean, obviously, for the weather; it's lovely [laughs]. We moved because we found that we can unobstructedly continue writing music from the simple place of joy and connectivity. 

When you look at the music industry, you want to be in a place where you are closer to the melting pot, where there's movement and rejuvenation. We found more opportunities over here in the United Kingdom when we came for our first tour in 2018, so we took the leap.

You were named a 2024 ambassador for Yamaha Music London’s flagship store. How did it feel to be named an ambassador out of so many talented entrants?

GN: It was crazy. Being an adult, the innocence that you lose is knowing that you don't always get what you want. But you actually do if you work hard for it. We love music and it's our passion, and it's the only thing that we do. 

It felt like, even if we don't get it, we had a lot of fun meeting new people, meeting our peers and seeing that we're all fighting the same good fight. When they announced we had won, I was like, ‘Are you kidding? Get out of here!’ It was one of those things where you realise, if you put your heart and soul into it, you can get what you want.

MK: I would say it was quite a surprise because that week, we were so busy. We did four gigs that week and by the time we got to the Yamaha finals, all the artists were so good. When they called out our name, we were like, ‘Oh – that's us!’ It was quite a surprise to experience that.

A standout performance of the finals was your rendition of I Can’t Live Without You. What inspired this song and how did it come together?

GN: It’s classic Stone Jets, even though some people might have not heard of us… so how could it be classic? [laughs] – but you'll soon figure out that it's classic with us. We do things off the cuff. We wrote the song when we were off to a gig. We said, ‘Let's quickly write two riffs and see what we get,’. 

We went to the gig and when we came back, we were like, ‘That riff that we wrote…there's something to it’. The fact that it had sat with us for so long, even after the gig, was special. Then we then started writing the song and talking about, ‘I can't remember how I met you late in December; time was frozen’. 

We were describing this moment where you’re meeting the love of your life for the first time but then only realising close to death that this person was the love of your life.

We realised this song was actually a song and not just the riff. We wrote it and then we let it sit. Three months later, Sofar Sounds in Cape Town needed artists to perform for the channel for the first time. 

They asked if we would do it, and long story short, we got there and we thought, ‘We're gonna record I Can’t Live Without You because it will be quite nice to see it in its raw version. And lo and behold, it's one of the most viewed videos of ours. Every time we perform it, it seems that we found gold.

Did you sense that it was a special song straight away?

MK: Yeah. Then when the video came out, people started enjoying it and we said, ‘Oh, this is our next single,’ because we were in two minds. It had been staring at us all this time.

As an emerging act, how much of a boost is an opportunity like being named the Yamaha Music London ambassador?

MK: This is a dream come true. We were thinking that we need to get more coverage, we need to grow our profile, we need to make sure that we release new music, and then the two will feed each other. If our profile grows, and we're releasing new music, then the people that are finding us will find the new music, and the new music will reach more people. 

Being chosen as an ambassador means that we can literally and figuratively work on those points that we've had. We can go into the studio and work on them, but figuratively, we can continue thinking about new music that we want to share to tell the true story rather than just us thinking, ‘This is what we need as a band’, because as an independent act, we're told we need so many things to get our story out there. This opportunity that we've been given are the keys that open and unlock the doors that we need.

GN: It is massive. Now, we say, ‘We are Yamaha London ambassadors’, and it's like having a knighthood that sets us apart. It also shows that the battle scars are worth it and you've done the good fight. We've been chosen amongst 200 artists and performed and there's a brand that identifies with what we’ve got, and they're willing to give us an opportunity to expand on that.