Rastas never die.
Amsterdam wasn’t how I imagined it.
It was more plastic than I thought it would be. More luminous. Swiftly conquered and slowly forgotten. And as I sat in that pizzeria, the salty yellow margarita melting in front of me, I thought about all the places I would rather have been.
Home in Reading. By the river in Henley. Back in Africa.
We’d been travelling by train all day. Hungry, homesick and in need of a shower, my mind drifted in and out of what Ollie was telling me from across the the table. I stared at the hoards of British tourists streaming past the window. I sincerely hoped the rest of my gap year wasn’t like this.
My phone buzzed with a text. Probably home. Probably wondering if we arrived safely. I dug it out of my pocket. It was home, but not the message full of questions I thought it would be. Only four words stood on that screen. And they felt like a punch in the stomach. I couldn’t breathe.
“Lucky Dube is dead.”
I don’t think I’ve ever been as angry as I was at that moment. The drunks and the skinheads kept shouting and stumbling past the window, and I thought I was going to be sick.
I grew up in Kenya. My family moved there when I was 4, and we stayed until I was 9. People always ask me if I remember it, but it’s actually all I can remember from my early childhood - my memories begin there. It was just so different. The complete opposite of the grey, wet English town I was born in. My senses were attacked. It was an explosion of colour. The heat, the taste, the smell.
The sound.
Reggae.
Reggae blasting out from every window of every building and ever car. I’d never heard it before. And in those five years of living there, I barely listened to anything else. I grew up on a steady diet of Gregory Isaacs, Bob Marley and Kanda Bongo Man, but the music I listened to and heard more than any other was Lucky Dube.
Quite simply, he provided the soundtrack to my childhood. It was constant; there was barely any silence in those days. Whether it drifted out of the house’s open windows as we played in the garden, filled the inside of the boiling car as we drove for seven hours to the coast, or twinkled in the background of ‘Simba Saloon’ as we ate lunch.
I’ve always associated it with sunshine, family and contentment. Even now, years later, when its cold and wet outside, I turn to Lucky’s 1996 compilation album, Serious Reggae Business to cheer me up. And, I kid you not, every single time I’ve put it on when there was bad weather, the sun has come out. Seriously. Most would call it coincidence, but I genuinely believe that Lucky’s music has a divine power to part storm-clouds. His music is just so incredibly happy. So hopeful.
Like many reggae singers, as well as having ordinary songs about life and love, he was also an activist who wrote brilliant songs that tackled more serious issues. My favourites of his when I was a kid were ’Different Colours/One People’ and ‘Slave’. One is an anti-racism song, and one is a song preaching the dangers of alcoholism.
But this just made it all the more painful when he died. On 18th October 2007, he was shot dead by carjackers in Johannesburg. It was strange. Not just because he seemed immortal in my eyes, but because, on that day, he became one of his own characters. His point had been horribly proven: no one is exempt from the overwhelming injustice in the world, and more steps need to be taken to combat it.
Just before he died, I had the privilege of seeing him play in a small club in Elephant and Castle. It was magic. He didn’t stop dancing or smiling the entire show, madly swinging his dreadlocks from side to side as he hopped up and down with closed eyes. And the audience - a mishmash of different colours, creeds, shapes and sizes - couldn’t stop dancing or smiling either. The feeling in that room was one of ineffable joy, like we had all just banded together and managed to solve the world’s problems, and had been transported to Zion as a reward for our heroic efforts.
There are only a handful of people in this world who seem completely and utterly incorruptible, who show no faults and who strive for greatness - in themselves and in others - every moment of every day. Lucky Dube was one of them. And, now that he’s gone, I don’t think there are many left.
So thank you, Lucky. Thanks for ‘Slave’, ‘Remember Me’, ‘Back To My Roots’ and ’The Other Side’. Thanks for my childhood. Goodbye Lucky.
Thanks for the sunshine.
