SUZY BELL speaks to reggae superstar Lucky Dube about the release of his new album Taxman – and other taxing matters
HE sits comfortably cross-legged in the Oppenheimer suite of the Edward Hotel with a toffee-coloured woolly tea cosy of a hat hiding his trademark Rasta dreads. His speech is slow and deliberate, with more than a hint of that laid-back but irritating American twang. Lucky Dube still repeats his mantra-like dictum: “I write for the people, about the people.”
But this time a word slides rather too often into the conversation. Money. So much so that Taxman is the title track, and he’s chosen to sing about it in the first single of his new album with the chorus: “What have you done for me lately Mr Taxman?” So reggae artists don’t just sing about slavery and oppression no more; it’s now about the money, honey!
But with Dube’s superstar status there’s certainly no lack of it. His record company, Gallo, boast that Dube is “South Africa’s most successful solo artist, ever”. Even in Ghana, Dube has become the first South African artist to have sold more than 20 000 legitimate copies of his album – some feat for such highly pirated territory.
Perhaps this is why he can say “Phooey!” to the fact that his contract states he must release an album each year. “I will only record when I’m ready,” he says unequivocally. In the same strident tone he announces: “The people believe in my music. It’s good music and I believe in it. Those that don’t believe in it must just stay out of it.” I suppose it does annoy him somewhat that some say he dilutes the rawness of reggae by experimenting with new sounds, like he does in Taxman, incorporating mbaqanga and rock guitar elements as well as strings and a vocal duet.
“But it’s still based firmly in the reggae tradition,” he insists. “I don’t want to sound like Peter Tosh or Bob Marley. I am different.” Yes, but what’s the difference between saying you’re a vegetarian, as Dube asserts, but in the next breath admitting to feeling nothing when slaughtering a goat for an ancestral offering. “I don’t feel bad, because that’s different.” Really ? “Yeah, mon, it’s not for a braai. And I speak to the goat first.” Yeah, mon.
And he’s quite puritanical about saying that just because he’s a rastaman and he sings reggae it doesn’t mean he smokes ganja all day. “In fact I don’t like ganja. A lot of the other reggae artists have got all messed up smoking too much ganja. Yeah, Marley smoked a helluva load of ganja, but that’s not what made him write beautiful songs. He was a gifted, hard- working musician.”
So how come this anti-dope-smoking, semi- vegetarian rasta with natty dreads is popular in Japan and Hawaii and equally big in the United States and the United Kingdom? “I think it’s because in the other countries they listen carefully to my messages in the songs.” Right.
So Dube’s back on tour this July to Colombia, then the US, back to Africa, and across to the South Pacific. And the harder he works, the more he tours, the more popular he becomes, the more albums he sells, the more money he makes, the more the dreaded taxman cometh.
Not that Dube professes musicians shouldn’t pay tax, but he is worried about “all the millions of taxpayers’ money that are disappearing. Some of that money should be reinvested back into the creative community. The money the musicians pay in tax, that we all pay through tax, where is it going? It really worries me.”
But something he’s quite blas about is that women all over Africa claim to be his wives and claim they have children to prove it. “Yeah this woman in Maputo says her two children are mine and in Zaire there’s this woman who says she’s my sister. She came to Johannesburg with her brother tell me my father is dead and they can’t bury him without me and that kind of shit.
“But there are no women out there that I’ve left alone with a child. I have three children of my own and that’s all. If there is a child of mine out there I don’t know about it unless I’m Joseph from the Bible.”