Indigenous Resistance: Eritrea Dub Journey

- Indigenous Resistance is a mysterious and geographically dispersed group of musicians dedicated to making politically conscious records featuring voices, sounds and ideas from what George Manuel calls the “fourth world” – global indigenous cultures.

Eritrea Dub Journey is the label’s 59th release – a record that doubles as an audio soundtrack to a 300 page e-book. The book is a beautifully illustrated depiction of travel to the East African nation of the title and other locations both geographical and metaphysical. Like most of their releases, the album is full of dub rhythms and spoken word passages.

Dr Das of UK bhangra-drum’n’bass fusionists Asian Dub Foundation is a frequent collaborator who features heavily here, alongside Michael Franti and a host of other lesser known or semi-anonymous artists.

If you’re used to hearing it used as a genre label, it’s easy to forget the original meaning of the term “dub”. It was named after the instrumental b-sides pressed on early reggae singles. Dub literally meant “the other side”.

That meaning goes some way to understanding the philosophy behind the Indigenous Resistance collective and their project. Their website and bandcamp are both called Dub Reality, and their ambitions go beyond just notes and rhythms. A clue is in the title page of the e-book, which describes a “spiritual dub journey”.

On an album where lyrics, especially lyrics in English, are pretty sparse; there is a repeated refrain of opening our eyes and seeing things in alternative ways. “If you don’t listen beneath the surface, you only hear half the story”, says one lyric, or another is “Truth is what they need, though it isn’t what they like”. On Sacred Dub for Nelly Stharre, the speaker implores us to “Understand the power of sacred things… This money world is moving too fast for people to take notice of things that are important.”

Eritrea Dub Journey then is dub in the sense that it is slow, effect laden, bass heavy music. But it’s also dub in that encourages a whole other way of seeing the world – where indigenous voices from around the world are placed at the centre, and music is dedicated not to individual fame and wealth, but to collective spreading of conscious and political messages.

It encourages a different reading of the past – the journey to Eritrea depicted in the book includes visits to some of the world’s oldest christian churches, reviving forgotten East African origins of the world’s biggest religion; while the Afreekan Anarchism project included on this album highlights non-hierarchical African cultures that existed side by side with the kingdoms and tribal chiefs.

Eritrea Dub Journey invites us to imagine whole alternative realities – where African socialist icon and former Burkina Faso president Thomas Sankara survived to build indigenous alliances in the Solomon Islands rather than being assassinated by his former second in charge.

And it invites us to imagine a different future – where indigenous people are at the forefront of creating a better world. “All rhythms have the ability to be activated as political metaphors...” says one spoken word passage, “by those who listen closely and carefully.”

- Andy Paine.