Growing up in the township of Kariega (formerly known as Uitenhage), Eastern Cape, Booshle G. was surrounded by family, faith and a mix of cultural influences that still shape his music today.
The 28-year-old singer found his direction after a high school talent show. From there taught himself instruments and built his voice, drawing on artists including Hillsong Worship, Maverick City Music, Jon Bellion, Twenty One Pilots, Tai Verdes and Dominic Fike.
What's in a name?
Born Buhle Gayika, for most of his childhood, people kept getting his name wrong.
“Growing up, I always had, like, people say my name in the most atrocious ways,” he told “The National”.
“You’d think it would be simple, but it never clicked to the people who didn’t really know how to speak the Nguni language. I had a really tough time accepting it, I used to get upset about it a lot, actually,” he said.
That changed while he was serving at his home church, where the ladies working there and the wider church community began calling him “Booshle”.
What was once a source of frustration became something he embraced once the people who raised him started using it. Choosing Booshle G. as his stage name was not just personal, though, since other artists already share the name.
He wanted it to mean something specific to South Africa’s own complicated relationship with pronunciation.
“There’s other artists named Buhle, and I was like, you know what, in a South Africa that is diverse, that has a history of people pronouncing names in an interesting way, I really wanted to have a way that could include my name, but also include those who can’t even say my name to be part of the journey of making my music.”
There was a practical side to it too, aimed at the international audience he was already planning for. That mixed upbringing runs through how he talks about his music today.
Musical origins
Educated at an English speaking boys’ school, and raised by his grandmother and his parents, Booshle G. moved between a coloured church and a white church growing up.
“I’m somebody who’s mixed in culture, although very still strong in my Xhosa identity,” he said, describing his friends, family and the people he communes with as coming from different backgrounds.
That desire to bring different backgrounds together isn’t just personal for Booshle G., it is something he’s built his live shows around, aiming for a room where people from different backgrounds, tongues and nations come together to experience something bigger than what they walked in with.
He first saw that vision play out during his debut headline tour in South Africa, where the crowd cut across race and age in a way he compared to nothing he’d seen outside a rugby match.
He didn’t expect the same diversity overseas, but found it held true in the UK and Europe too, something he credits less to demographics than to what he believes “the lord” and the music itself is doing.
Asked to describe his sound to someone who has never heard it, he admitted genre labels don’t quite fit.
“I find it so difficult to put a phrase or a term or a word that describes the music that I make in terms of genre. The best thing I can do is that I try to make life giving music in every aspect, music that brings freedom, that brings breakthroughs and a sense of belonging in everything that we do.
“People would say that my music is like folk inspired pop music, but for me, I would kind of boil it down to just life giving music,” he said.
Booshle G. on the rise
His growth since has been rapid.
His 2024 single “Take Me Home” passed 6 million streams and earned a co-sign from Trevor Noah, while 2025 releases “Heavy” and “Broken Heart” pulled in more than 15 million social views between them and helped generate 35,000 pre-saves ahead of his debut album, “I Was Never Alone”, released in February 2026 through Nettwerk Music Group.
That album brought his full sound to a wider international audience for the first time.
The growing audience was tested directly when Booshle G. stepped onto a European stage for the first time, unsure if the crowd would know his music at all.
By the end of his first headline UK and European tour, every date had sold out.
“It feels a little unreal. It was a scary thing for us to do because we weren’t really sure if people on the other side of the world knew or connected with us or our music, but I was pleasantly surprised at what felt like a miracle,” he said in a statement.
The word “miracle” is also the title of his new single. The song is about the moment someone arrives unexpectedly and love becomes too significant to write off as coincidence.
Booshle G. explained that the song is built around the courage it takes to stop guarding your heart and commit fully to something uncertain.
“I want people to feel inspired to jump into the things that excite them, and to remember that it isn’t about living perfectly, but about living purposefully. And falling in love doesn’t always have to be a scary thing,” he said.
The song was written and produced alongside Aidin Nortje, Devon Murray and David Balshaw, a team that has helped shape Booshle G.’s genre blending sound across pop, folk, rock and groove influences.
He describes his purpose as an artist as connecting music to the world, bringing joy and freedom to anyone listening, and reaching people who feel lost or lonely.
“I just want you to feel alive again,” he said.
With a sold-out tour behind him and a new single built on the same idea that carried him through it, unexpected connection, Booshle G. is heading into the next stretch of his career with an audience considerably larger than the one he wasn’t sure existed.
nomathamsanqa.sithathu@nationalmg.co.za