Lucky Dube
By Lady English
Photos by Ignus Gerber
Lucky Dube sits in his office and watches the busy
lunchtime hustle from his window in Johannesburg. Lucky is reflecting on how things have
changed since the end of the apartheid system in South Africa, which came to an end ten
years ago . "Even though the old
monster has died, there's a new monster in town that we have to deal with." Lucky tells this writer over the telephone, referring to the then all-white
government. "Things have changed
politically, but it doesn't mean that all is well. Some changes are for the better, but
there are new challenges and new problems that we have to now face."
Born Ermelo Lucky Dube, his name is fitting for the man
born 200 kilometers south of Johannesburg and grew up to become one of the country's best
selling recording artists and one of its most outspoken performers. "Growing up, there were five of us on my mothers'
side of the family, as well as other family members who lived with us. We were very poor
and sometimes no one in the family would be working," he says in a soft, clear
South African accent. "My grandmother kept the whole family together and I used to
think of her as a magician, as she would multiply nothing by nothing and come up with
something. Things are different now as I don't have to worry about whether I'll eat today
or not, or whether I'll have a place to stay, and things like that."
His first shot as a professional musician came when he joined
his cousin’s band, The Love Brothers and recorded their first Mbaqanga song in
1979. Mbaqanga is one of the traditional African music styles, a type of Zulu soul music,
heavy on the percussion with intertwining melodious rhythms. Staying with this type of
music, Lucky Dube released his debut solo album three years later, which was eventually
certified gold and won him numerous national awards for his efforts, as did his following
musical endeavors.
Years earlier when Lucky was at school assisting as a librarian,
he became acquainted with the Rastafarian religion after reading encyclopedias. This
interest stayed with him and as he progressed in his own customary music, his fascination
with reggae grew stronger, especially the contraband works of Peter Tosh and Bob
Marley that was smuggled into the country from Swaziland and Zimbabwe.
"The
situations that they were singing about in Jamaica, were the same as I was going through
in South Africa at the time and I wanted to pass on the same messages of black identity
and liberation to the world," explains Lucky. "However, reggae music
wasn’t freely available here and rarely played on the radio besides the occasional
Jimmy Cliff or an unthreatening Bob Marley tune, because the government was very much
against it. They banned most of the good stuff and if they found you with a Peter Tosh
tape or something similar, they would arrest you or you could just disappear one day
simply because they didn’t want the people to hear what was being said in the
lyrics."
Willing to take the risk and face the consequences, Lucky went
into the studio in 1995 without telling his record company and recorded his first reggae
album, Rasta Never Die -- the first ever-recorded in South Africa. "I
didn’t tell anyone what I was doing, and only my producer, Richard Siluma, and the
sound engineer were with me," he muses. "I played what instruments I could
myself, then recreated the missing links on the computer, it was pretty crazy."
An out of place "Yeah mon!" rears up throughout
our interview, and as we speak to a very relaxed sounding and pensive Lucky, it’s
difficult to imagine that this man has been through so many obstacles to get where he is
today. "When people found out what I
had done they were very concerned for me as they knew I could get into trouble for
recording this type of music and that they would get into trouble for owning or liking
it," he says. "I'm sure some of them thought I was crazy, as I moved from
the well-known Mbaqanga styles; earning gold and platinum discs, into something where
there was no guarantee of even getting air play, let alone a hit song."
Rasta Never Die was subsequently met with strong
opposition by the government, as he expected, and immediately banned from radio airplay.
Lucky didn’t let this stop him and went to work on his second album, Think About
The Children, which became a major hit, achieving gold record sales. Lucky Dube's
third reggae album, Slave was soaked with his political thoughts and sold in excess
of five hundred thousand copies. However, within five days of his 1989 album Prisoner
hitting the streets, the new album became a double-platinum seller and Lucky had
established himself as an international recording artist who could not be stopped.
Sparked by his quest to express his anger against the oppression
of apartheid Lucky Dube's early material was fueled by political  and spiritual struggles. Especially in songs such as "Together As
One," which broke the biased virginity of the state-run South African Broadcasting
Corporation when they played this first ever anti-apartheid song on the airways.
"Dracula," the song with the hauntingly distinctive style of Jimi Hendrix's
guitar riffs shining first and the lyrics coming second and "Prisoner," a
liberating piece that coincidently was released in the same week that eight of South
Africa’s longest serving political prisoners were released from jail. Then there were
songs such as "Feel Irie," a catchy ditty overflowing with authentic reggae dub
that makes you want to check the song credits as you hear a carbon copy of Bob Marley and
his female backing trio, the I-Threes, blasting through your speaker boxes.
Lucky’s style has drawn similarities to his biggest
influence Peter Tosh and there is little doubt that Jamaica’s premiere music export
was duplicated to perfection back in those days. Sadly though, Lucky’s more recent
material is diluted with softer sounding melodies slipping back to his familiar African
rhythms, including the Mbaqanga and Soukous (South African soca) and sometimes sounds so
mellow that the U.K.’s commercial reggae band UB40, spring to mind. Now
Lucky's lyrics center mainly on personal demons from his childhood, separation, apologies
and regrets. Eventually, all the sounds and lyrics blend together and nothing stands out
as a winner.
Lucky Dube's latest album release is entitled The Other Side
on Heartbeat Europe label. While Lucky has no plans to make the journey to
the other side just yet, he explains the meaning behind the title track saying, "I’ve met
people from all over the world while on tour who say that they want to return to Africa;
yet certain people in Africa can’t wait to get out of the continent. When we (the
band members) talk to people about Africa, they ask about the country and in particular
about what their African name is, saying 'Give me an African name,' which we did. On the
flip side of this, we have people here in Africa who change their given African names to
Western names, so that’s really what the song is about. People think the grass is
greener on the other side, until you get there and see it for yourself."
With extensive touring over the last several years, there are few
countries where the well-versed Lucky hasn’t performed. His childhood dreams of
becoming a world famous singer have been realized and as he, along with his fellow
countrymen, celebrates the end of apartheid, the monsters are less visible. "I feel great now, as I know I can record a song without the
risk of it being banned, or of me being arrested and locked up, or even killed for saying
certain things. Now I can perform live without any government officials being there,
waiting to arrest me if I say the wrong thing; so it feels good to have that type of
freedom. And it’s good to know that people can own |
