Jonathan Rubain is a gospel music superstar who is helping to put Hanover Park on the map, writes Gasant Abarder.
Cape Town - And the winner is: Jonathan Rubain: Best Male Artist of the Victory Gospel Music Awards 2016. Jonathan is a gospel music superstar who is helping to put Hanover Park on the map.
But as his star rises he isn’t going anywhere, because where he grew up is where he draws his inner strength.
Jonathan, 32, received top honours at the awards last weekend, but they will never go to his head. Instead, he uses his profile to help Hanover Park's profile.
We met earlier this year when I was guest speaker at the Cape Chamber of Commerce’s Cape Flats chapter. I was struck by how grounded and modest Jonathan was. I would later learn about his connection to Hanover Park Cricket Club, of which he and I are patrons.
I remember thinking how I couldn’t reconcile his immense profile built over a short period of time in the music business with his down-to-earth disposition.
But that’s because whatever Jonathan does, it is motivated by his acute sense of the community he comes from.
“I am quite excited about winning Best Male Artist’ at this year’s Victory Gospel Music Awards and I’m very honoured. I have been in the music industry for 14 years and been doing it full time for 10 years. So it’s been quite a journey.
“I want it to be an encouragement for youngsters growing up on the Cape Flats. This was the first time I’ve been recognised for doing music, so it’s quite a big deal for me. Hopefully there’s more to come.
“I am going to be very successful and someone who the people of Hanover Park can be proud of. I want to be very successful so that I can give back to my community and other communities on the Cape Flats. To me it is all about giving back and uplifting others.”
Jonathan’s involvement with his community is not just talk. He is part of the ward councillor’s events committee with entertainment as his portfolio.
He has put on a number of shows in the community with full stage, big sound and professional artists. One of these was the Hanover Park Jazz Festival where he performed with other big acts like the late Zayn Adam, Errol Dyers, Alistair Izobell and Loukmaan Adams.
He has also produced a local version of Hanover Park’s Got Talent, entertains senior citizens in the suburb at an annual ward councillor’s lunch for the elderly, and entertains Hanover Park’s matric pupils each year at a special breakfast before their final exams.
“It’s a wonderful place with a rich history. There are definitely more positive stories than negative, but unfortunately those stories do not get published.
“There are people who grew up in the community who have become very successful. Hanover Park produced the likes of Benni McCarthy, Vicky Sampson, Hashim Domingo, Albert Fritz and many more academics. I love the spirit of the place. I love the fact that people are still looking out for one another. I feel much safer in Hanover Park than anywhere else in the country or the world.
“I have relationships with pastors, imams, gangsters, everyone. There is still a sense of your child is my child’. I have a very good working relationship with our ward councillor Antonio van der Rheede; and maybe one day I will be the ward councillor of Hanover Park,” says Jonathan with a smile.
“There is nothing different about a place like Hanover Park and a community in an affluent suburb. The only difference is the stories that get told about the two different communities. Both have people living in it and where there are people, there will be good and bad.
“It shaped my fighting spirit and survival strategies. It taught me how to be street smart. The ‘hood teaches you to fight for whatever you want. We don’t have fathers and uncles with lots of money who can invest in our ideas. We have to make it happen for ourselves and that is what I am doing today.
“I put together my own productions with money that I don’t have. I have lost so much money with productions, but growing up in a place like Hanover Park, you know that you’ll have to pick yourself up because no one is going to feel sorry for you.
“It also teaches you to remain humble, because there are many of my school friends who did not make it. They have fallen into the trap of gangsterism and drugs and I was just blessed that I did not fall into those traps.”
Jonathan’s story is no different from any other kid who grew up rough in Hanover Park. He matriculated at nearby Groenvlei High School. His dad worked for the City of Cape Town and his mom as a factory worker in Steenberg.
He lived for the first six years of his life in Bonteheuwel before his parents returned to Hanover Park, where he was born.
For anyone who has grown up on the Cape Flats, there are minute variables that can make the difference between success and failure. For Jonathan and his younger brother, the grounding his parents gave them, the church playing a cornerstone role in their lives, and his music made all the difference.
He carries on that tradition by practising the same values with his own family.
Then there is the rare musical talent that came to the fore with hard work and his drive to be the best.
“I would like to believe that I’m a humble person. I come from humble beginnings. My parents instilled good values and principles in me. I remember my mom slapping me if I didn’t greet everyone in the room. So today I make sure that I greet people with a smile.
“I was raised in the church and I spent all my childhood in the church and doing the work of the Lord. As a teenager in Hanover Park, name brands were a big thing, but my mother never bought me expensive clothes. I had more church clothes than any other clothes,” he says, laughing. “They taught me to be content with what I have.”
Jonathan describes his wife Cherish and his children Mingus, Malachi and Micah as the pillars of his success. The couple have been sweethearts since high school, been married eight years and have been together for close on 15 years.
“My family is my everything. What I do, I do for them. I want to be successful for them. I want to be their superstar. I try my best every day to be the best husband and father I can be.
“My wife’s support over the years has been amazing. She has literally been there for me since day one. Whenever I have productions or shows, she is the first person I share the idea with.
“She has been with me through the highs and very lows of my career. I try to understand how a woman can believe in her man’s dream this much. She gave up her dreams so that I can follow my dreams, which have now become our dreams.”
Jonathan does have a wicked sense of humour. When my trial with previous Friday Files guest, South African A team coach Vincent Barnes - to see if I had it in me to be a Proteas cricket player - went awry, Jonathan suggested he had the mettle to take on the coach’s bowling prowess.
The musician was among the first to put up his hand to be a patron of Hanover Park Cricket Club, which seeks to help change the fortunes of the suburb.
“I started playing for Hanover Park Cricket Club when I was 11 years old. The club is very close to my heart.
“I even brought my friend Vernon Philander to the club to motivate the players and take pictures with him. I also got Vincent Barnes to encourage the guys.
Then he adds with a smile, but with some conviction: “I believe if I continued playing cricket, I would have been Down Under at the moment.
“The club is good for the community because it gives boys and girls another option in life. The club is now committed more than ever to get promotion to the top leagues and to produce its first Proteas player, which I believe is going to happen. Sport in the community reduces the crime level and Hanover Park Cricket Club does that.”
Luckily, like me, Jonathan realises he has a different purpose. He is hard at work in the studio to produce a new gospel album for release on December 8 and he will tour the country with the new material from January.
Jonathan is also putting the finishing touches to a solo production scheduled for April and plans to produce his first show at GrandWest’s Grand Arena next year.
But he is not waiting for things to happen. Jonathan regards himself as an entrepreneur by putting together his own productions and albums with no support or a record label.
Is he successful? Well, apart from his most recent award, the gospel music powerhouse has sold more than 10 000 copies of his first album and DVD.
“I grew up with gospel music. I woke up with it and went to sleep with gospel music playing loudly in our house. My father used to sing and play guitar in church. My father is a pastor and I’m an assistant pastor to my father.
“Gospel music is about worshipping God and is also about bringing hope to a hopeless world, and I want to be a part of that. I want to be a messenger of hope. I believe gospel music can change people’s lives and that is what drives me.
“I like to see people changing for the better. I like when people become successful. I like when people reach their full potential in life, to find their purpose and follow their dreams. That makes me very excited and I know I can help people with that by playing gospel music.
“Music chose me. I started playing the drums at the age of six. My uncle then taught me to play the guitar at 10 and I started playing the bass when I was 14.
“Music runs in my family. All my uncles play an instrument. David Rubain played saxophone for Abdullah Ibrahim many years ago.
“I have been blessed to travel the world because of music and I have been to the US, Norway, France, Malaysia, Zimbabwe and around our country.
“I really don’t know where I want it to take me. I guess there is no limit to music and where it can take you. All I know is I’m working hard to give my family the best.”
Cape Argus