Obituary: Nick Page (1960-2021)

Nick Page was a maverick. Better known to many of his followers as Count Dubulah (the name he acquired when he co-founded Transglobal Underground in 1990), he was a guitarist, bass player, producer, composer and bandleader. He was the only white member of a reggae band when he was at school in North London, and was still organising new musical projects from his hospital bed. His death from cancer at the age of 60 seems bitterly unfair, for he was as creative and enthusiastic as ever. I know of at least four intriguing projects he was working on, and there were probably several more.

Born to a British dad (a painter and writer) and Greek mum (a novelist who had earlier fled to Sweden as a political refugee), he sometimes called himself a mongrel, and delighted in creating new and often unlikely musical fusions, often involving different musical styles from across the planet.

He worked on over 250 albums and singles, and played with a whole variety of bands, covering anything from pop to experimental rock, before becoming one of the key figures in the British world-fusion scene. He was helped in many of his projects by a group of loyal musical friends that included the reggae star-turned-academic and exhibition curator, Mykaell Riley. They first worked together in the early 1980s in Bumble and The Beez, alongside virtuoso bass guitarist Winston Blissett. Riley said that Nick “lived for music. He was forever searching, coming up with new experiments.”  

His first commercially successful recording was Transglobal Underground’s debut single, 'Temple Head', with its (then) quite outrageous and genre-defying blend of sampled Polynesian chanting, Indian percussion and dance beats. And that was just the start. He stayed with TGU for seven years, working alongside Natacha Atlas, while also acting as house session musician for Nation Records, home of the Asian Underground and bands like Fun-Da-Mental. Then came a ten-year spell with Neil Sparkes in the performance and production duo Temple of Sound.

In 2008 he launched Dub Colossus, a project over which he had complete control, both as performer and producer. Invited to Ethiopia by musician Dan Harper, then working there for VSO, he recorded with local musicians, ranging from the veteran saxophonist Feleke Hailu to the brilliant young pianist Samuel Yirga, and female singers including Sintayehu ‘Mimi’ Zenebe. There were further sessions back at Real World, with British musicians joining in, and the result was that inspired fusion of Ethiopian, Jamaican dub and jazz styles, A Town Called Addis (2008). A further five albums and five mini-albums were to follow (some download-only) as the band became a live success. They played twice at the Jaipur Literature Festival, invited by writer and historian William Dalrymple, who described Page as “a fabulous, funny, warm and brilliant man whose work fills half my playlists”.

Other projects ran alongside Dub Colossus. He travelled to Damascus with the bass player Bernard O’Neill and the Syrian qanun player Abdullah Chhadeh to record with local musicians for the Syriana album The Road to Damascus (2010). And he explored his Greek roots on the epic, bravely original Xáos (2015) in which his guitar work was matched against traditional Greek fiddles and bagpipes, and the microtonally-tuned keyboards and programming of his cousin Ahetas Jimi.

Diagnosed with cancer in 2016, he refused to slow down. He toured and recorded with Transglobal Underground for the first time in 20 years, joining the reformed classic early line-up that included Natacha Atlas. In lockdown his projects included new work with Atlas, Syriana and Xáos, and he added guitar to bravely experimental ambient collaborations between Ahetas Jimi and the cello player Matthew Barley, originally recorded in 2005.

He was a fine musician, and an equally fine producer, whether working with Mexico’s Los De Abajo or Pakistan’s Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali (with Temple of Sound), or Atlas on her solo recordings. He loved talk and discussion (though he was unexpectedly quiet on stage), and was a generous, kind and loyal friend. Peter Gabriel was right when he wrote “the world seems emptier today,” and talked of his ”extraordinary talent and extraordinarily big heart.” Nick Page was a remarkable man, and will be greatly missed.