Lucky Dube
South Africa's Reggae Superstar

 

Interview by Lesli Singer
Photograph by
Originally published: Autumn 1992

In South Africa, it's very rife in the black community that we find children with no fathers or with no parents at all. Like myself, I didn't have a home base where I could say, Mother, Dad, live here. My father, I didn't know him; I've never seen him in my life and so when I was born, my mother had to go to work in the city just to get me goin'."

Lucky Dube was born on August 3, 1965 in Ermelo, South Africa to a mother who felt fortunate to give birth to a boy after having been childless for many years. She named him 'Lucky,' which was just how she felt. Shortly after he was born, Lucky was left in his grandmother's care.

As a young boy growing up in Newcastle, Dube worked cleaning gardens to earn money for schoolbooks and clothes. By the age of eight, he was singing at school and in church, and later in local bands. His first professional break came at age fourteen in his producer's Zulu pop band, the Love Brothers. Later, he formed the Skyway Band and the extremely successful Super Soul.

Dube became very popular with his music, which was influenced by the sounds of mbaqanga, or traditional Zulu music. With money in his pocket, he learned he could be his own boss. Dube remembers, "I didn't need a father or a mother at that time 'cause I had money."

Despite his successful Zulu pop career, Lucky was not completely satisfied. As a youth, he loved the reggae music he heard, especially that of Peter Tosh. He wanted to record reggae from the beginning of his musical career but the climate was not right. In South Africa, reggae artists and dreadlocks were associated with ganja and drugs and were regularly harassed. Lucky himself was stopped and searched many times. He actually came to enjoy the searches because he was always clean. Lucky says, "I don't smoke, I don't have cocaine, I don't drink, I don't do nothing - I'm just myself!"

By 1984, Dube was a major mbaqanga star, signed to Gallo Records. He released sixteen gold records between the years 1979 and 1984, mainly with Super Soul. Gallo had confidence in him as a Zulu artist so, when Super Soul broke up, Lucky decided to pursue his dream of becoming a reggae artist. He put together a new band, The Slaves, whom he still tours and performs with today.

Even though he was an established recording artist, it was difficult for Dube to get his first break in reggae. There was immediate resistance from his record company and, later, from the South African government, which banned his first reggae album, RASTAS NEVER DIE, upon release.

Fortunately, Dube's second album had a stroke of luck. The title cut, Think About the Children, was adopted by the child welfare office and the album began selling. Gallo then became extremely supportive and, with their help, THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN quickly sold 100,000 copies.

His third album, SLAVE, had already sold 500,000 copies in South Africa when Dube attended a record company convention in Nice, France, in January of 1989. The meeting between Gallo and Shanachie Records resulted in the U.S. release of SLAVE. His subsequent twenty-five stop tour, complete with his fourteen-piece band (including three female back-up singers and horn section), riveted audiences and caught the attention of critics as well.

PRISONER, Dube's fourth reggae album, cut across racial barriers in South Africa. The single, Together as One, became the first song by a black artist, not to mention the first reggae song, to be played on white radio. Sales surpassed those of SLAVE and Dube toured extensively in support of the LP. During this time he acquired a multiracial audience as a result of extensive radio play.

Every time Dube plays a show in South Africa, he performs for no fewer than 40,000 people; he has filled stadiums with up to 120,000 fans of all races. In the United States, the crowds are much smaller. At his first show in New York, many exiled South Africans, as well as cast members of Sarafina!, turned out to see him.

Dube believes reggae music has played an important role in emancipation. Although most reggae was banned, bootleg cassettes of Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff and Peter Tosh were passed hand to hand, from freedom fighter to freedom fighter. Songs containing the word 'apartheid' were automatically rejected by the government. There were times in Lucky's career when he had to get creative with his lyrics due to government censorship. The song title Slave was issued as Liquor Slave for its South African release.

With censorship no longer a problem and the recent abolishment of apartheid, Lucky believes that his music should be used for peace and understanding between the races. He comments, "That's why I talk about the social problems we have and try to get a solution."

Dube's success has caused a reggae boom in South Africa as new artists and new companies tap into the commercial potential of the music. Dube took the lead in organizing a concert featuring many South African reggae artists. The concert, 'Reggae Strong for Peace,' has produced an album, and the associated video is expected to be released soon. Lucky also has a forthcoming two-hour live video which was filmed in South Africa on May 1 and 2 of this year. Untitled as yet, it is expected to be released by year's end, according to Shanachie Records, Lucky's U.S. record company.

Lucky Dube is now the biggest-selling recording artist in South African history. With his 1991 release, CAPTURED LIVE, and the new (1992) HOUSE OF EXILE both spending months on Billboard's World Music chart, Dube seems poised to break down barriers of racial discrimination throughout the world.

Currently he is touring with Sunsplash USA, co-headlining with England's Aswad. The tour has received rave reviews at its first shows in California. The Irvine Meadows show outside of Los Angeles boasted the largest-ever paying reggae crowd with 11,400 tickets sold. The entourage will perform at Sunsplash in Jamaica before embarking on the tour's European leg.

Lucky's touring schedule for the remainder of '92 is extensive, including such areas as the Virgin Islands, Madagascar, Seychelles, Reunion Islands, Japan, London (for the WOMAD festival), Australia and West Africa, to name a few. Lucky and The Slaves will be home in South Africa in time for Christmas.

In early '93 Lucky will be working on his next album, which he has begun writing during his tour. I caught up with Lucky and his manager, Richard Siluma, during an afternoon break prior to their Houston performance on June 12:

Your reception at Sunsplash last year was tremendous. Were you surprised?

Yeah, well, it surprised me a little but I did expect the people to love the music because already I had heard of people from Jamaica talkin' about the fact that they had heard the music and they loved it. But performing live is a different story. Because people do sound good on record but when it comes time to live performance it gets difficult. And so I was really surprised and at the same time very happy at the response.

Your name dominated the Jamaica press coverage of Sunsplash for weeks afterward. When were you contacted about the USA tour by Synergy?

I think it was decided from the time we left Jamaica that on the next USA tour they were gonna have us. So preparations were made from then.

Was there ever any question about bringing your whole entourage on the tour?

Not really. It wasn't a problem because they know that's what makes my band. That's what my band is all about. In the first years when I started performing, people would say, well maybe the band is too big, I got to cut down or something like that. But I couldn't do that because this band is the band that makes my music what it is. They're the people that I've recorded with, they're the people that I've been performing with for years and so I couldn't just take other people that don't even know my music or understand it the way this band understands it.

Do you still have the same personnel?

Yeah. Same band.

How is the response in South Africa to HOUSE OF EXILE?

It's been very positive, just like the others. They love it.

Have you done any videos off the album?

Yeah, we have two videos, the video of the title track and there's one for It's Not Easy.

It's not often that you hear people singing about the subject of divorce.

No, not really, people usually don't. And it's one thing that is very common nowadays and it needs to be attended to. People should know about it and have ways and means of handling it because it's very destructive to some people. When it happens to them, it destroys their lives completely. People forget that, before they were married, they were human beings - they had their own lives. It doesn't mean that when you are married and that somebody goes you don't have a life, you know. So I wrote it 'cause people have to know about these things.

There was a time when you weren't free to sing your lyrics as written. You had to censor yourself.

Well, yes. When it comes to writing, most of the songs that were straight and direct to the point sometimes were given trouble by the government and so you had to find ways and means of writing sensitive material.

But the people who listened got the message.

Yes, the people did.

Have the political changes in South Africa affected people's lives?

Well things are really different now and things are getting much better because, now that some of the oppressive laws are being removed, people are getting to mix more than before and that makes them understand each other much better. Because all these years people were kept apart and it was difficult for blacks and whites to understand and know things about each other. When we grew up we were told that white people are bad and that's all we knew. And the white kids, when they grew up, were told that black people are bad, stay away. And so that's all they knew. As we were kept apart, nobody tried to find out the truth about this whole thing. Why are they said to be bad? What are they doing that's bad? But now that all these rules that were keeping us apart have been removed, we have the chance to be together and understand each other better. Hatred has been carried over from generation to generation. But now people do mix - people do get together. Share ideas and all that.

Was there a willingness before but people were just unable to because of the laws?

Some people wanted to but they wouldn't like to be seen doin' it because they had a name for whites that like to mix with blacks --they would call them 'keffer buti,' which is like 'nigger brother' or something like that. So even though they were willing to, they would distance themselves.

So you've personally seen an improvement.

Yeah, even though it's not much. As you know, there are a lot of things that we waned to be changed, some of which have not even been touched. But the bottom line is at least there is something going on. I believe that changes in the books won't do anything. Because it's the people who are directly involved. It's the people who have to make the actual change.

You have a song on HOUSE OF EXILE called 'Mickey Mouse Freedom' What's the inspiration behind that song?

Yeah, well it happened. I won't mention the name but it's a country I've been to which is said to be free. Okay, there's no apartheid, there's no this, everything is cool. But when I got there, I found that apartheid is there and this freedom that they claim to have doesn't exist. It's just that they have been given this freedom but it's been tainted. They are like puppets. Somebody has their hand up their asses and it makes them talk but it's not the real thing. It's Mickey Mouse freedom.

You once told me that you write from your own experiences. Are any of your songs about you personally?

Yeah. Some of them are about me. Like Hold On - that's about me and my mother.

Your mother went to work in the city and left you with your grandmother. You didn't know your father. Have you become a stronger person since you had to grow up so independently?

Well, I think my having been strong was because of the fact that I knew that, for me to survive, everything depended on me and nobody else. I had nobody behind me. I had nobody to do things for me. Everything that I was gonna achieve in life was gonna be from me. So that actually made me strong because I knew from the beginning that I was all alone and so whatever happened had to be from me, nobody else.

Most of your songs are about issues and things around you. Is that always how you get your inspiration?

Yeah, that's just the way it is. Because I don't sit down and say I want to write a song or think about what can I write a song about. It's gotta come from inside and then I write about it. Like maybe I would see something as I'm on the road and then I would write a song about that. I wouldn't just sit down and think about writing a song.

'Running, Falling' has a different sound than anything else on HOUSE OF EXILE. Is this a glimpse into the future direction of your music?

Not necessarily, because that is heavy roots. On the previous albums I have one or two heavy roots songs. On PRISONER, it was "Dracula" that was roots. Some people like that kind of style and so I throw in one or two songs like that every time.

I read that you said reggae is the music of liberation and unification. Why reggae?

I think reggae because it is one kind of music that is known all over the world. People from very young to very old listen to reggae. Nobody grows out of reggae so I think it reaches more people than any other kind of music. It survives this oppression that is imposed on us because in the past and even now some people are trying to clamp down reggae. People are still trying to discourage it but it survives that. It goes everywhere. There's nowhere in the world where I've been that they don't know what reggae is. They know reggae even if they don't know the word. If you say, "Bob Marley music," they say "ah, ah, I know Bob Marley." It's everywhere.

In the past you've told me you're a Rastafarian. Now that you've been to Jamaica and on this tour, have you learned more about the subject?

Well I didn't learn more in Jamaica because I didn't get much time in Jamaica. I think we were there for about a day or two and so I haven't gone to places. But what happens this year is I have friends that are gonna take us to the countryside to meet the older people that still have the roots and then we're gonna talk about things. If things go well, we might get the chance to go to Peter Tosh's grave in Kingston and then I'll find people that will discuss more.

I've talked to a lot of Jamaicans and what I've found out is that, for some of them, Rastafarianism is a philosophy of repatriation and black self-determination. For others, it's a religion based on Selassie as the second coming of Christ. What is it to you?

Well, most people say Selassie is the living God or whatever, but to me, Selassie was just a great leader, the Emperor of Ethiopia. To me he's like Mandela or any other political leader that is strong. He was a very strong person, but he's not the living God to me.

So it would be the philosophy as opposed to the religious aspect for you.

To me, it could be just a way of life.

Has the Rastafarian way of life influenced your writing at all? Many of your songs are about unity, oneness.

Well, this unity and all that is not necessarily Rasta. I think that could be in everybody's mind. Because that's what the world needs today. That's what life is all about - unity - that's how it should be. It doesn't have to come from a Rastaman only. That's got to be everybody's thing.

Have you ever considered doing Zulu music again?

Well the fan mail that we get back home every time. Some people say they love the Zulu stuff, why don't you do Zulu and reggae? But it would be difficult for me to do that because coming to perform live, how will I do it? That means I'm gonna be four hours on stage - two hours for Zulu and two hours for reggae.

Could you do it with the same band?

Yeah. I once did that when I recorded reggae after doing mbaqanga. I used to do it in my live concerts. I would start with mbaqanga and do one hour, then one hour of reggae. Finally it happened that reggae became more popular and you found that when I was playing the Zulu stuff people would go, "hey, no, do reggae." And I found that if people knew I would do reggae at night they would go out and come back when I play reggae and so finally we decided that I would stop doing Zulu. And because we were not recording Zulu anymore we just carried on with reggae.

What's next for Lucky Dube after this tour?

Well, I can say that after this tour it's still another tour. Because I'm going home for about four days and then I'm going back out again.

Do you have a family? Do they know who you are?

(Laughing) Well, I have. It's just my daughter and my wife. They know who I am, even though not much, since I'm out of the country most of the time, but they understand because that's what my life is all about.