“Don’t waste your time and mine,” a concert promoter once told Richard Siluma, Dube’s producer at the time. “No one wants to hear reggae.” The words seared through a young Dube, who had only just switched from mbaqanga to reggae and was still relatively new to the music scene. Now, 12 albums and almost two decades later, Dube is highly sought after for concert bills around the world — more often than not as the headline act.
He is also South Africa’s biggest-selling artist. Still going strong in 2003, Dube continues to prove that concert promoter and others like him wrong, releasing yet another album, The Other Side. Following on from his 2001 album, Soul Taker, The Other Side is Dube’s 13th offering to the music-appreciating public. Since his first reggae album, Rastas Never Die (released in 1985), Dube has used his albums to reflect the socio-political climate in which he lives. From the apartheid offences that spawned Slave to the corruption in post-1994 South Africa that inspired The Way It Is, Dube’s music seeks to challenge the current state of affairs. As Dube explains, The Other Side follows suit: “I’m against having a theme for my albums, but I do make sure that when I’m writing songs, the music has some social, political and personal issues to deal with. These three elements are always part of my music.”
The Other Side brings these three elements together and centres them on the pertinent subject of HIV/Aids. Dube explains: “I was watching a documentary on TV that showed all thesefunerals of people who had died of Aids. It struck me that behind all the figures and statistics are the faces of real people. That’s what I sing about.”
Dube also sings about the social trend of emigration on The Other Side. “South Africans want to be American, while Americans want to come to Africa to discover their roots. Everyone thinks it’s better on the other side,” he says. Travelling around the world, Dube has found this to be true and, as a musician, he has quelled the homesickness of many a South African abroad who switches on Taxman or hums along to Feeling Irie. Because of his travels, Dube’s music incorporates the different sounds he has assimilated from around the world.
The Other Side continues in the same musical vein. A bit of rock, the blues and some jazz has been added to the mix. There is also an unashamed return to more of the traditional Zulu sounds of maskanda and mbaqanga that first brought Dube fame as a musician. He is glad to have these styles enrich his music, but will not stray too far from reggae. Also included on the album is a new style Dube likes to call “rasta kwasa” — the heart of Jamaica blended with the African-tinged dance beat of kwasa kwasa — as heard on the single Ding Ding Licky Licky Licky Bong. The title might be off-putting, but the song is as catchy as any bearing the Dube trademark.
Dube has come a long way. An artist who was once banned in his home country and not welcome on concert stages, he went on to play at the acclaimed Reggae Sun Splash festival and performed on tour with Peter Gabriel for three months. “It was a dream come true, because here was a man whose music I loved and admired, asking me to tour with him,” Dube recalls. “Standing on stage at Glastonbury in front of about 80 000 to 90 000 people and announcing that Peter Gabriel would be joining me in singing one of my songs was just incredible!”
Dube has also extended his skills. Not only did he perform the tracks on The Other Side but he produced them, too. Following the album’s launch, Dube will be preparing to tour overseas this month. His international tour kicks off in the United States, moving on to Uganda in July and then to Europe in August. As he continues to feature on concert bills across the world, Dube consistently challenges the words of that concert promoter all those years ago. And time and again, he proves his presence as the biggest-selling reggae artist alive.