Here is a pop quiz: Quick, can you name four female reggae artists? Unless you are a complete reggae enthusiast, probably not. There’s Marcia Griffiths, Rita Marley, Koffee, and…. Of course, there are and were many others, but reggae and dub, in particular, have always been male-dominated. The British producer Adrian Sherwood aimed to do something about that. While making a name for himself as a dub and industrial music innovator over the last four-plus decades, he has championed female artists such as Neneh Cherry, Massive Attack singer Shara Nelson, and Slits singer Ari Up. In fact, it was Ari Up who, with producer Style Scott, began the project that became Dub No Frontiers. That was over a decade ago; Ari Up died in 2010, while Scott passed away in 2014.
Now, Sherwood has finally ushered Dub No Frontiers to completion. The concept is to highlight ten different reggae singers, all of whom are female and none of whom sing in English. None of these women are well-known, even in the reggae and dub worlds. The most notorious among them is not really a reggae singer at all. She is Maria Wenda, the wife of Benny Wenda, the exiled president of the Indonesian region of West Papua.
Sherwood met these women while working in the UK and touring and traveling throughout the world. In keeping with the dub and reggae tradition, he invited each of them to sing over a rhythm track he had versioned with his On-U Sound collective.
The results are nothing if not interesting. The On-U sound productions are, as ever, excellent. That’s crisp, immaculately played, carefully-produced dub reggae with little time for passing trends. There are plenty of widely-panned echoes and little explosions, but the dub effects rarely threaten to clutter up the mix, thanks in no small part to the crafty, concise arrangements by Sherwood’s old Tackhead mate Skip McDonald.
Crucially, this tasteful, straightforward approach leaves plenty of space for the vocalists. They are all quite talented, but there are some standouts nonetheless. The album is bookended by the set’s deepest, heaviest dubs. Yehaiyahan’s slow, slinky “Love Hurts”, sung in Mandarin Chinese, recalls the Bristol trip hop sound. Sherwood adds some subtle, unique shivering effects that lend the track an extra layer of atmosphere. Russian singer Nadya Ostroff’s “Little Cosmonaut”, a song about a Soviet space dog, drops the tempo even more, with melodica and classical guitar providing the moody backdrop for Ostroff’s subtly emotive voice. One can’t help but think the song is about Laika, the mutt who ultimately was sent into orbit on a suicide mission.
Not everything on Dub No Frontiers is so heavy. Likkie Mai’s “Haste Makes Waste”, in Japanese, features the singer’s enthusiastic, elfin voice over piano lines that recall nothing so much as Tommy James & The Shondells’s “Crystal Blue Persuasion”. It’s not every day one hears a rocksteady track sung in Hindi, but that’s what Rita Morer’s “Meri Awazz Suno” is, with dramatic horns and a fuzzed-out electric guitar solo adding to the Bollywood-via-Kingston vibe.
If Dub No Frontier were to make a play at the novel, it would be a cover of Bob Marley’s “War” sung in Arabic. But Tunisian singer Neyssatou plays it straight, and her rich delivery, combined with Sherwood’s stark, cavernous production, gives the track an identity of its own. The one novel moment, perhaps inevitably, is Maria Wenda’s “Okama Werrek Halok”. The syndrums and squeaky effects don’t exactly complement Wenda’s languid voice, which is saddled with a strange vibrato effect that makes it sound like she is gargling. Sherwood has said, “Maria isn’t a professional singer, but it was important to document her and her husband and their country’s story.” That is a laudable sentiment. Still, the tradeoff is the set’s weakest track.
Dub No Frontier stands out in a genre like dub, where the plethora of versions and compilations can get overwhelming. Sherwood’s stewardship ensures that, despite the vocalists’ eclectic backgrounds, the set gels pretty well as an album. What it lacks in musical boundary-pushing, it makes up for on the cultural side.