'Bigger than the Beatles': The legacy of Lucky Dube

Updated

The brassy chords and floating keyboard sounds of Australia's desert reggae owe a lot to a legendary South African musician. You might never have heard of him, but in remote Aboriginal communities he was "bigger than the Beatles".

In remote communities across central Australia, desert reggae blares from car stereos and smartphones.

It's a music unique to the red sand and spinifex country, born sometime in the early 90s.

Like any musical movement, it's hard to trace it back to an exact influence.

But one name appears again and again: Lucky Dube.

'It opened up my eyes'

Jason Butcher remembers the moment he became hooked.

He was a child playing in the red dirt in Papunya, north-west of Alice Springs, when he heard a song playing from an old cassette player.

"It just made me feel the beat," he says.

"I went and sat next to my father and I asked, 'who's that?' And he said, 'that's Lucky Dube'."

Jason is the son of rock royalty — his father Sammy Butcher and his uncles are founding members of The Warumpi Band.

Warumpi were pioneers of Aboriginal rock, but Jason's own musical journey has taken a different turn.

The arrival of a Lucky Dube cassette in Papunya "changed everything" for him.

For many years Jason's played lead guitar in The Tjupi Band — legends of the desert reggae scene.

The Lucky song Jason had first heard playing as a child was Victims.

"It opened up my eyes. The way he sings about politics and the police and the government," he says.

"All I wanted to do was get Lucky Dube music."

And he wasn't the only one.

It might have remained impossible to gauge Lucky's popularity in remote Australia, but something happened to unite fans from across the desert — he toured.

Who's Lucky Dube?

In 2005, young entrepreneur Scott Boocock dreamed of touring an international artist to Alice Springs, a place that doesn't usually see big international acts.

His friend Joe Miller suggested Lucky.

Scott was dubious: "I said Lucky Dube, who's Lucky Dube?"

He was worried Lucky wouldn't pull a big enough crowd, but Joe was convinced it would be a success.

He hosted a reggae show in Alice Springs on the First Nations radio station CAAMA, and he'd watched Lucky's popularity grow over the airwaves.

At the time Lucky was a big star in his native South Africa and internationally.

He'd started out as a Mbaqanga singer — a popular Zulu style — but made a controversial switch to reggae to reach a bigger audience.

Reggae also appealed to Lucky on a political level, connecting him to an international struggle for racial equality.

His lyrics were born from his personal experience of growing up in poverty as a black man under the apartheid system.

"All he dreams about is the freedom of the nation. "When every man will be equal in the eyes of the law." — House of Exile, by Lucky Dube

And the lyrics resonated in remote Aboriginal Australia too.

"Lucky Dube was one of the favourites and the community relate to all the songs," Joe says.

According to Joe, Lucky's most requested song was Slave.

"Slave is not about slave, [it's] slave to the alcohol. I explain all this to the listeners and this is the song that's most popular."

By the time Lucky's tour of the territory began in May 2005, he had thousands of fans.

He played in Alice Springs, Darwin and Cairns.

In Alice Springs 4,000 people — many who had travelled hundreds of kilometres from remote Aboriginal communities — came to see him.

The Centralian Advocate described Lucky as "bigger than the Beatles" in remote communities.

When he opened his mouth to sing, the crowd sung too. Joe was vindicated.

Reggae's rise

Ross Muir has watched reggae's rise in central Australia from within the high walls of the Alice Springs prison.

For 17 years he ran the prison's music program, recording more than 1,000 original songs with mostly Aboriginal prisoners.

The majority are desert reggae songs.

"You'd be hard pressed to find any other type of music in this area," he says.

He believes reggae's popularity can be attributed to Lucky's tour.

"Lucky Dube toured, and these fellas, they're like sponges if they see something that they like. They don't let their intellect get in the way," Ross says.

"And they just went for it and loved it.

"If Bob Marley had toured, it would have been Bob, but it wasn't Bob, it was Lucky."

The tour of the Territory made an impact on Lucky too.

"To have the Indigenous Australians loving his music he was heartfelt, he was humbled by it, and he wanted to come back," Joe says, "but unfortunately it didn't happen."

Lucky's death and a uniting struggle

In 2007, Lucky was shot dead, a victim of a carjacking in Johannesburg. He was 43 years old.

His death was felt by millions of fans around the world.

In Darwin, the Africa Australia Friendship Association decided to hold a memorial.

"His death was kind of a loss of I think one of our most powerful voices as African Australians," says Fezile Mphele, a friendship association member.

"Lucky was a huge voice in taking our history, our misery, our suffering, to the international scene and explaining how we feel."

To the association's surprise, the memorial was attended by many Aboriginal people, some who had travelled great distances and camped outside the hall the night before waiting for the event to start.

It led to another memorial in the tiny community of Milingimbi in north-east Arnhem Land which Fezile attended.

"It was one of those pinch your skin moments. I thought, is this real, am I in a movie?" he says.

Children waved streamers in the Rastafarian colours, there were dances and speeches to remember and celebrate Lucky.

The event was organised by Djandjay Baker.

Lucky's music appealed to her Christian faith, and she says it sent the right message to young people.

"He was there to help people understand that you have to stay and work, and realise that you're working for people, your mums and dads, your grandmothers, and base that music for them and their past and future."

But for others, like Millingimbi elder Keith Lapalung, it was Lucky's political messages which resonated.

"Lucky Dube, he fought real hard. His struggle is the same as [ours] in Arnhem Land," he says, in a video of the memorial.

The memorial was held after the Northern Territory intervention had begun.

In his speech during the memorial Keith urged people to take inspiration from Lucky as they dealt with the shock intrusion by the defence force.

"Music is one of the political [ways] you can bring your argument case throughout the world. Talking doesn't help, but music will."

Also at the memorial that day was a young boy called Danzal Baker — better known these days as Baker Boy, a rapper, dancer and current Young Australian of the Year who grew up in Milingimbi.

"It's the most beautiful and the most inspiring moment of my life," he recalls.

'It's like we're one mob'

Death didn't dampen Lucky's popularity. If anything the opposite happened.

Back in central Australia, across the whole Western Desert cultural bloc, his music was taking hold.

Bill Davis has been producing Aboriginal bands in Central Australia for 40 years.

At a certain point, Bill could hear Lucky's influence in much of the desert reggae music.

In the song structure: the big brassy chords opening the songs. And in the floating flute sound of the keyboard.

"That was a Lucky Dube thing too. The keyboardist of Lucky did that and everyone copied it."

Today, there are desert reggae bands in most communities throughout central Australia. Guys a generation younger than the pioneering reggae bands.

"We listened to Bob Marley and Lucky Dube, that's why we play reggae," Granville Westlake of Warburton says.

"It's like we're one mob. Same colour, different people."

Back in Papunya, Jason's good guitar is locked in a rehearsal space and he can't find the person with the key.

Instead he reaches for an old Fender guitar he found at the tip while he was looking for tyres.

"Who would throw out a Fender guitar," he says with a laugh.

He plays a few chords from Lucky's song Victim, the one he remembers hearing as a child.

"If it wasn't for Lucky we wouldn't be playing reggae today," he says, thinking of his journey with his Tjupi Band. "We'd still be playing rock and blues and country."

"I think he must be looking down at us, smiling, telling us to keep playing music."

Credits:

Words and photography: Rhiannon Stevens for Earshot

Rhiannon Stevens for Earshot Editor: Monique Ross

Monique Ross Digital production: Farz Edraki

Farz Edraki Additional images: ABC News: Claire Campbell; Getty: Frans Schellekens, Bob King, Stringer, Gianluigi Guercia, David Redfern, Henner Frankenfeld; Baker Boy image: supplied.

Topics: music, arts-and-entertainment, reggae, community-and-society, indigenous-music, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, human-interest, papunya-0872, nt, alice-springs-0870, australia, south-africa, kalgoorlie-6430, wa, darwin-0800

First posted