10 years after his death, Lucky Dube's music is still a topic of debate

Ten years after his tragic death in a car hijacking in Rosettenville, Johannesburg, on October 18 2007, the debate still rages on. Almost 10 years after his tragic death, purists still refuse to accept his music as reggae. My relationship with Lucky Dube began the day I walked into a small music shop called Ziyaduma. I had gone there hoping to find a copy of Bob Marley's 1980 album Uprising.

The year was 1985 and Dube had just released his album Think About the Children. The title track was blaring from loudspeakers on each side of the door, and I had no clue what genre of music it was. But the voice seemed familiar.

The music had a tinge of reggae fused with sounds of mbaqanga with echoes of Jimmy Cliff and a bit of Peter Tosh. It was reggae with just the right amount of zest to appeal to non-reggae fans.

When one of the store assistants told me it was Lucky Dube, it explained why the voice was familiar. My uncle played his mbaqanga album Kudala Ngikuncenga ad nauseam.

Reggae greats, including Marley, had struggled for decades to win the ear of the mainstream audience, and Dube did it without even trying.

Unlike purists, Dube was not confined by barriers. He was not afraid to take the best of two genres and create a sound that was glocal.

He won where legends had failed, much like jazz legends such as Fats Waller and Jimmy Smith, who introduced the electric organ into the genre despite protestations from purists, and made it popular.

Waller introduced it in the 1930s and Smith turned it into a respected and popular instrument in modern jazz in the 1950s.

"Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse," former British prime minister Winston Churchill once said.

Dube did not only conquer South Africa, but went on to earn respect globally, even receiving several invitations to perform in Jamaica, the birthplace of reggae.

He released 22 albums in a 25-year period and became South Africa's biggest-selling reggae artist.

If he was alive today, he would have been proud of Marley's youngest son, Damian, whose fusion of reggae and pop has made him a global megastar.

Dube even dabbled in Afrikaans music in 1986, releasing an album and an EP titled Die Kaapse Dans and Help My Krap respectively, under the pseudonym Oom Hansie.

Born in Ermelo, Mpumalanga, on August 3 1964, and raised by a single mother, Dube's never-say-die attitude took him from working as a lowly gardener and security guard to being an international celebrity.

While reggae artists from Jamaica and the diaspora sang about the days of slavery, the displacement of the African and as often romanticised Africa as the utopian homeland, Dube's music focused on the reality of the continent's internal struggles and the suffering of the majority of its people.

He made reggae real and relevant for Africans, by telling their stories and singing their pain.

While he loved tweaking the nose of terror, he also made people believe that even though they were different, they were special just the same.

When I think of Dube, I am reminded of another genius, Miles Davis, who dared to be himself at a time when jazz stubbornly refused to peep out of its pigeonhole.

Today he is credited with having invented some of the current forms of jazz such as be-bop and jazz fusion.

Like Davis, Dube did not give a flying fart about purists, and that became the essence of his greatness.

Back at the Ziyaduma music shop on a bright Saturday morning, I didn't have enough money to buy two albums, so I bought Dube's Think About the Children.

Little did I know that the album would achieve platinum sales status and establish Dube as a popular reggae artist in the country.

I still bought Marley's Uprising, but two months later.

OUR FAVOURITE LUCKY DUBE ...

ALBUMS:

House of Exile (1991)

Prisoner (1989)

Soul Taker (2001)

SONGS:

Prisoner: Watch the music video

House of Exile: Listen to the track

Group Areas Act: Listen to the track

Running - Falling: Listen to the track

Is this freedom? Listen to the track

Teach the World: Listen to the track