Richard Siluma was a prolific figure in the South African music industry. Born in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal in 1954, he started recording in the late 70s with mbaqanga act The Love Brothers (aka Super Soul). In the early 80s he switched to disco, recording as Richie S for David Gresham Records, even scoring an international release on Private I Records in the US with ‘African Dance’ in 1985. As a producer for Teal Records’ Plum imprint he produced early Stimela single ‘I Hate Telling a Life/I Love You’ (1983), later re-released as Rewind (1986) and is credited as an executive producer on Fire, Passion Ecstacy (1984). He put together the popular Afrikaans act Oom Hansie (1985-6), and also produced early releases by Ruben Beewa, as well as Lorraine Staple (1986) and Shangaan disco outfit Kaya (1987). Siluma is best known as the producer of his cousin, Lucky Dube, and is credited with encouraging him to make the leap from local mbaqanga artist to global reggae superstar. After Dube's tragic death in 2007, Siluma continued to release reggae albums under the name Saggy Saggila. He passed away in Johannesburg on Monday 25 August 2025 at the age of 71, a few weeks after suffering a stroke.
The following is an interview with Siluma conducted at Downtown Studios in Johannesburg in late 2009. It has been edited for clarity.
[How did you get started in music?]
I started in 1979 to record professionally. My mum and dad were mbube singers, so we had a choir that was practicing right in our home. My dad used to teach them, he was the lead singer among them. And if my dad was not there, I was able to lead them on that day. If maybe one bass singer was not there, I was able to help them and be a bass. Alto, tenor, I was filling all those places. I was a very fast learner, cos when my dad was teaching them, I would be sitting and listening and looking at their faces, and be able to see who’s good, who’s not good. That’s how it worked. I was quick on helping and saying, ‘No, you better do it this way.’
I started working at the same time, when I was singing, so I was doing both. Working in the music industry. because when I came to Joburg, I looked just for music industry [work], there was nothing else I wanted to do. The first thing I did, I was a storeman, working in a warehouse, which I was very happy to do, because it’s where I learnt a lot, working in a warehouse, it gives you a chance to learn.
The company was Warner Brothers communication - WEA. And then with good working, I was transferred until I ended up being a producer for Teal Record Company, which became Gallo in time. So I’ve been producing there, and it’s where I produced guys like STIMELA, and LUCKY DUBE and many more. With Teal and later with Gallo GRC. I’ve worked for 24 years with Gallo GRC, in all the positions.
[One of your early projects with Lucky Dube was Oom Hansie – how did that come about?]
This OOM HANSIE, ‘Ons Doen Die Kaapse Dans’. I had a problem with Gallo, because they did not sell [the first three] Lucky Dube albums. They started hating Lucky. [When he was doing mbaqanga]. He couldn’t stand against the SOUL BROTHERS, STEVE KEKANA who were top guys.
I said, ‘Yes, it will never sell very well, because they are also not being promoted very well. But nevermind, I will come up with something. Just give me a day in the studio.’
They said, ‘OK, you can take a day in the studio, but bring us something great to make money.’
I came to the studio, I went to the archive. I took some tapes, thought this is a nice sound. I went to the studio, took out all the voices that were there because [they were] Shangani from Maputo, and I put Afrikaans on that, just in one day, because you have masters to play — just take out the voice and put Afrikaans voice on that and mix quick. One day, you can do four singles, and get them out to check it all out, whether they like the sound. I went to all the shebeens, we checked it out.
You see, with us, black people, when you follow it properly, you find that those who were speaking Afrikaans in the township, they were those people who were thinking that they were very clever. Because Afrikaans was another way of showing ‘it’s me, you know, I can speak Afrikaans’. English was not in; it was Afrikaans, Zulu-Afrikaans or Xhosa-Afrikaans. So Afrikaans was a thing that was there…
When I gave it to the company, in three weeks, they came back to me and said ‘Richard, this is rubbish, we can’t sell it.’ We were just imitating drunk people, that’s all — what they do, Afrikaans [people] when they’re drunk — that was it. The type of music, it was the type of stuff that was being played in Europe, that European dance beat, then keyboards, I played it myself. I gave it to the reps who came back and said it’s rubbish.
I said, ‘How much stock do you have?’ They said, ‘We’ve got 300.’
I said, ‘Do you mind giving me that 300?’. They said, ‘OK we’ll deliver it to your office.’
And then after three days, they put the boxes in my office.
They said, ‘It’s rubbish’. I said, ‘Thank you’.
Then I went to the people who were selling beers in big numbers for shebeens. And I said, ‘You’ve got a number of big shebeens.’ They said yes. I said, ‘I want to give you this LP, so that whoever buys in big numbers just give them a free LP.’ I went to two or three of them, one in Soweto, one in Alexandra, one in the east [rand]. And then I came back home.
The next Monday, everybody was selling the songs on the street. The company couldn’t cope with the printing!
[As Richie S you were also a ‘bubblegum’ artist – was this a label you used?]
At that particular time, if you want the truth from me, there was not good musicians. There was just a number of people taking a chance to get budgets from the studio to go and record one album for 10 days. Even if it’s one song for 10 days. Even if you don’t sing it nice today, you can come in tomorrow and [the next day], until it gets to a level when you can say, this sounds like a song now.
There was no musicians then. A musician was BRENDA FASSIE, Lucky Dube, MIRIAM MAKEBA, HUGH MASEKELA, all those other ones, those were musicians. But the others were not musicians. I started as well not being a musician — just making beautiful noise to sell. So the bubblegum is a beautiful noise to sell. It’s not a song.
[Early in your career at Gallo you worked with Ray Phiri’s Stimela as well as West Nkosi – what was that like?]
Stimela was a huge band. When I came into the music industry, Stimela was already well-known. But not as Stimela, as the band behind MPHARANYANA: THE CANNIBALS. They worked at Gallo under producer WEST NKOSI.
When I came in it was the time they were moving away from Mpharanyana. We got into the studio as Cannibals — the album, they were just doing for themselves. I saw them at a particular time, when I was appointed to be a producer. I had been working as a salesman, but with all the help I was giving the company, when I came back from a trip, they eventually asked me, ‘What’s next?’ And then I said, ‘What’s next? If I can be a producer, then I can offer you all that I’ve got.’ So after saying that I got straight into producing.
Funny that after I met RAY PHIRI and Stimela, I was so blank. But Ray Phiri was so switched on. He knew a lot of things. Black musicians then were paid R60 per side. Even if you start 8 o’clock in the morning and finish at 10 o’clock — a flat rate [no royalties]. And Ray told me about all those things that are happening, which he was not happy about. But he never had power. Because I was appointed [producer], I had the power. I had chance to meet with the big guys around the table. And then everything that he was teaching me, the next day I’d go into the meeting, I asked the question ‘but why is a black man paid R60, but all the white musicians are paid per session? ‘ and then the white men, people like [Gallo boss] Ivor [Haarburger], would say, ‘We don’t know that! We never knew cos there were black guys working with artists.’ There was this segregation – you’re black, you work with the blacks. So the black guys were the ones who were controlling that problem.
It helped because the top guys said ‘just make sure all your musicians are paid according to other musicians.’ that’s when we arranged to them to come to the studio and get paid R150 per session. Two sessions a day is R300, at least. From R60 a day, they were paid R300 a day. And then when the price went up, they ended up getting back like today, where its R3000 a day. Which I’m happy about.
West Nkosi was not exploiting people. I wouldn’t say he was exploiting people. It’s the knowledge he had at that particular time. It was not exploiting. But it’s the knowledge. The knowledge, it can become exploitation. Because it’s what you know. so it was what he knew at the particular time. Ray, also, what he taught me is what he knew, because he was seeing all these things. I wouldn’t say West was exploiting. Because today you’ll hear LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO say they had a time when they were exploited by West Nkosi. I’ll say no, he never actually exploited them. He spent 3 to 4 years trying to get them known throughout the country. When you start a group today and split income with them, you’ll never be able to make them be known because the money that comes in, they’ll spend it before they reach their goals. But what he was doing, he was taking the money and putting it into goals. For them, when they reach the fame, they came back and said, ‘the man was exploiting us’, forgetting that the man was building a road for you to fame.
[How did you get into recording reggae with Lucky?]
When I started in reggae music, there were local artists who were trying to do reggae music. But with me, I came with a new way of doing reggae. I was reading what the newspapers were writing about reggae, my ears were very open to reggae. And I found that if you do a reggae that sounds like Jamaican reggae, and try and sell it, nobody’s going to buy it. American reggae, nobody’s going to buy American reggae. I had to come up with South African reggae.
What is South African reggae? South African music is to mix the local music with so-called skank reggae music. So you get a South African music. When you take your South African music to American or Jamaica, they’ll be saying, ‘How did he do it?’ because this is not reggae, but it makes me dance. So that’s how I penetrated. That’s why Lucky became better, because of my South African mixture of reggae. Today we’ve got a number of South African reggae singers in South Africa. Because they’re trying so much to be Jamaican or American, they get nowhere. They just vanish.
With me, I don’t want to talk as if I was like everything on Lucky. But with me, the idea of reggae came when this guy, JIMMY CLIFF, came here [in 1980]. When I was watching him performing in Orlando Stadium, Lucky was still a tot at home, I was reading his brochure, it was saying: “Jimmy Cliff has always been used by the Jamaicans — if they want to go to any country, they always send Jimmy Cliff first. If Jimmy Cliff is accepted, then they can send over the other bands that come from Jamaica.” I was reading that and looking at his performance. And I could see I can do much better than him.
Obviously Lucky was still a child, he couldn’t say anything, because he was not even in a studio. He used to be called in on Saturdays, come and do some vocals, and he would come and find that I’ve got the script [lyrics], and he’s gonna go into it a little. I would always tell him, ‘Look, you’re allowed to change it if you feel like it.’ And then he’d take it and change some things … It’s how we worked.
The whole thing wasn’t ‘who’s gonna make money?’ – I needed just something that would make us known. Knowing exactly how poor we grew up at my granny’s place. And Lucky was also poor. Food was not an option to us, we were eating anything we could find. So that was in my brain – I really wanna change our lives. And I managed to change that – today we’re living in beautiful houses, driving big cars. On top of that, a person like myself. I’ve never put my foot in a school before. I learnt when I started working in the industry. I learnt to speak English when I started working. I did a few night school courses just to be able to know how to spell and all those things, but what I’ve picked up out of that, it’s enough for anything I want to do in life. So that’s me. Lucky at least I helped him to be able to do his matric. But me I couldn’t. I’m proud of myself, because today I can do anything I want to do. I went through that.
His talent was unbelievable. My talent was unbelievable as well, but I was good behind him, behind the scenes. Because if I knew he was not gonna be better than me, I was not gonna give him a platform. I gave him a platform because I knew that he was better than me.
When I started this reggae album, it was not Lucky Dube’s album; it was a project. But after he performed very well, I changed it into a Lucky Dube project. Because it was not easy for him to leave what he has created, traditional to reggae. But for me it was easy to create a way for him to see… I had to persuade him a lot. My brother John can tell you, because I used to go home and sit in front of them and sell the idea to the two of them. ‘Lucky, please let’s do reggae. You’re gonna be singing like Jimmy Cliff, you’re gonna be going places, we’re gonna go to America.’
One day Telkom made a mistake with his [phone] bill, and he was supposed to pay R9000. I said ‘Na, it’s not a mistake, you were phoning Jimmy Cliff last night, that’s why!’ he said ‘No, why, I don’t even know Jimmy Cliff!’ – because I was trying to get him into it. Eventually he totally refused. I said ‘OK’ because I’m a bit older and my brain is [good] – I came into the studio and made reggae rhythms, ‘I’m a reggae man’ and all that … I programmed that.
When I was sitting in my office, I started writing the label, said ‘shit, he will never kill me, he’s a child .... [wrote] ‘Lucky Dube: the SA King of Reggae’ – without him knowing. Everything was prepared, the single went into radio. He heard it over the radio, he said, ‘But how can they say I’m doing it?’ I said, ‘Your voice was so well promoted on your traditional stuff, I couldn’t lie to them.’
And he keeps saying he wants to listen to the song, he wants to see the single. I said ‘No, I don’t have any. They’ve all gone to the radio station. It’s not something that’s gonna be sold, you know.’ And I keep on lying to him until I spoke to AMASWAZI EMVELO, which was under West Nkosi. They were going on tour. I said, ‘Can you please take Lucky Dube and my band? I want them to get used to performing.’ And they did. They did 13 shows. He was then still doing traditional numbers. When they came back, Lucky was very cross because the band needed money. I said, ‘No, they wouldn’t pay you cos you’re not advertised. You’re just an opening act.’
Then they said, ‘Well, what we are gonna do, because we never got our money here?’ I said, ‘OK, you do it again. You do it yourself now, without another band, for you to make the money.’ They went out to do the tour. When they came back, they came back with R30,000. And I took that R30,000 and split it among themselves. They’d never seen money before. And they were so happy.
I came up with another one. I said, ‘You did the other one via Pongola [northern KwaZulu-Natal]. Now I want you to do Joburg straight to Durban.’ By that time, that reggae song was playing almost every day on radio. And then they went down to Natal, playing Standerton and other places. They played at a place called Umquthu, in Zululand. When they arrived there, they found that everyone was dressed in rasta [colours]; the band was just normal. And they did a show [with lots of cheering]. At the end of the show, the people started singing the song, became most of the people came for the reggae song. They started singing the song. Lucky was already backstage.
There’s a guy, a rasta guy who plays the keyboard with Lucky, Thuthukani [Cele]. He started playing the thing, the whole house went mad. I was not even there. I was told by my elder brother John, because he was managing the gig. He said, ‘Guess what happened with your song – it stole the whole show!’
I believe Lucky was already sitting in the changeroom and he actually peeked out and saw people there. The band had switched off, they said, ‘Look at the people – we can’t [go back out on stage].’ Lucky eventually went out to the stage. He started singing a few lines, and he stopped the song. After stopping the song, people asked for some more. And without him practicing the thing, they did it again. After doing it again for the second time, the whole house wanted to shake his hand. On the first show, he ended the show with nobody saying anything. But one song, twice, everybody was standing in a line, ‘Thank you Lucky, thank you Lucky!’
It was the day he decided to sing reggae.
The next day he asked the band to set up their instruments quicker, he wants to practise my song. ‘We want to do Bra Richie’s song, and I want to add the other song that we’ve never practiced.’ Done. ‘And I also want to add PETER [TOSH] and BOB [MARLEY] songs. Because people seem to be liking this.’
When they came back from the tour, he came to report that he will never do traditional music any more. Because he does his full [traditional] show, and people don’t appreciate it. They appreciate only the four reggae songs. We started then practicing reggae.
He changed with three shows — in Natal, Lesotho and Botswana. In Natal, he did half of it traditional, half reggae. In Lesotho, he tried to do half of it in Zulu [traditional], but it never worked, so we stuck to reggae. Going to Botswana, we were totally on reggae. Coming from Botswana, we were totally reggae — forever, until he died.
Rasta Never Dies was the one that I started. And coming back from that tour, we did ‘Born to Suffer’, ‘Think about the Children’. We wrote those songs in Botswana. And because I was a sound engineer as well, we wrote that song in the morning, then I recorded [a demo] on cassette, and it was played on an outdoor speaker behind the [VW] Kombi when we were doing advertising. Children were running, [singing] ‘Born to suffer!’ – you know it’s a hit!
We came back from Botswana, went straight into the studio and recorded it. It did not take off immediately, because the company could not help me, because their mind was not into what we were doing. They were worried that Lucky had been doing something else and I was coming and trying to disturb what he’s trying to do. But I pushed on until … when I released 'Slave', I did something unbelievable. Because Lucky was still not famous. But already I knew, and he knew, everybody knew that he was good. But I couldn’t put it across the white person’s [Gallo boss’s] brain!
I actually recorded ‘Slave’. I wanted to catch ourselves when they were sitting together, on a Friday afternoon, with Lucky Dube’s performance. We couldn’t make a video because we didn’t have money and all those things. I went to a [TV] programme that was starting at 5:30pm. I spoke to them and they included Lucky. I said, ‘Can he be the first artist?’ They said, ‘No problem, he will be the first artist’. I knew that would be the time when our reps would be sitting together. Then I sent the band in to go and perform. I went to the sales performance [meeting], I said, ‘Today I want to present exactly at this time.’ They said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘No, I’ve got something. I won’t tell any more.’
When the time came, I went to the TV set, the programme was starting: ‘Our artist today is Lucky Dube.’ They finished the song, I switched off the TV and we started talking about 'Slave'.
I was ordered to go and do a last traditional album. But because of the power of his reggae, I decided to do an album called Slave. Either the company fires me or what, but I decided to do this. I think if they can remember why they hired me: they hired me to be a talent scout. They never hired me to be told what to do. So I’m doing exactly what I was hired for. This is the album. They can fire me if they want, but this is the album. I gave it to them. They said, ‘Great album! We’re gonna sell it.’
The next Monday, all the dealers were phoning in, ‘Lucky Dube, Lucky Dube…’. After a few months, I had MAHLATHINI singing reggae as well, when West went back to the studio to do ‘I’m in Love with a Rastaman’. They did one song. It was because of the success I’d made. Because Slave had happened, his mind was changed.
© 2025 Afrosynth
No comments:
Post a Comment