Prisoner

There have been many fine reggae artists to come out of Africa since Bob Marley played in Zimbabwe in 1980 and inspired an explosion of interest in reggae music all over the continent – the greatest of them, however, was Lucky Dube. The dreadlocked South African singer should have turned 60 this year. Instead, he died in 2007, murdered at the age of 43 in a Johannesburg suburb by carjackers who gunned him down in front of two of his children. If Dube was undeniably Africa’s reggae king, there’s also a strong argument that he was the most potent artist in the genre to emerge from anywhere on the planet as the world struggled to fill the void left in the reggae firmament following Marley’s death in 1981. Nor, surely, was it coincidence that while the digital sounds of dancehall and ragga took over from roots reggae in Jamaica, it was in South Africa – still in the grip of the evils of apartheid – that Marley’s torch should be picked up to burn brightest. Born in 1964 in Mpumalanga, Dube’s first recordings were made in the Zulu pop style known as mbaqanga. However, in 1985 he released his first reggae recordings on the EP Rastas Never Dies. The record sold poorly in comparison to his mbaqanga releases but in marrying resistance to apartheid with the insurrectionary reggae rhythms of Marley, Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff and the other Jamaican pioneers, Dube found both his musical and political mission. Further reggae albums followed, including 1986’s EP Think About the Children, which went platinum and put him on the map outside his homeland, where the apartheid regime banned his records for their militant lyrics. Best of all, though, was 1989’s Prisoner, which now gets an expanded 60th anniversary reissue as a vinyl LP with two previously unreleased bonus tracks recorded live in Uganda and smartly packaged in the original South African artwork with ‘a special insert with all the song lyrics and rare photos.’ At the time of its release, it wasn’t clear that within five years an ANC government would take power, as Dube sings on the title-track, ‘I’m a prisoner… how much must I pay for my freedom?’ and on ‘War and Crime’ he calls on the solidarity of the world to ‘bury down apartheid, fight down war and crime.’ The classic tropes of Jamaican roots reggae are masterfully delivered in the one drop rhythms, the staccato skank and the call-and-response vocals; but Dube was a highly original artist rather than a mere imitator and there’s a distinctive South African township flavour in the mbaqanga-style keyboards and the warm percussive strokes. Bob Marley sadly never got to hear the music of Lucky Dube. But he would have recognised him as perhaps his greatest heir.