MUSIC LUCKY DUBE : Reggae Man : The musician who popularized the sound in South Africa will bring his band to Santa Barbara on Friday.

“It’s better to be lucky than good”--old baseball adage.

And this Lucky is good, not to mention inspirational and probably rich too. Now I don’t know if he’s married, girls, but Lucky Dube (pronounced Doo- Bay) is as popular as pizza, free money or a “Get Out of Jail Free” card. Dube is the man who popularized reggae in South Africa--someone’s gotta do it.

Dube has more than a dozen albums, most of them only available in Africa, plus three movies to his credit. The guy is busier than Madonna’s accountant. The current tour will last two more months, then Dube will return to South Africa, release another album then resume touring again. The man and his 13-piece band will headline at La Casa de la Raza in Santa Barbara on Friday night.

Dube’s new album, “Prisoner,” was just released on Shanachie Records in this country. The previous one, “Slave,” released in 1989, has sold more than 500,000 copies in South Africa alone.

But it wasn’t always blue skies, green lights and the check is really in the mail for Dube. His first reggae album, “Rastas Never Die,” was banned by the government. And just five years ago, his concerts in his homeland were more like, well, riots.

“I used to have a lot of trouble with the police, but I got used to it,” Dube said in a recent phone interview. “It doesn’t happen now because there have been a lot of changes in my country. But five years ago, the police would come to the shows and listen to what you sing, and if they didn’t like it, they would tear-gas the place and chase everybody away. Now when I play in South Africa, everybody comes, white people too. Five years ago, they couldn’t.”

Until 1985, or until Dube, South Africa had no reggae music. That’s like a town with no Mexican food. And before reggae in South Africa, everyone seemed to be playing mbaqanga, sort of a Zulu pop disco music. Now there are alternatives.

“Reggae is getting bigger. I can tell because as I go doing all these concerts, the attendance and the record sales keep increasing. There’s a lot of reggae bands coming up in South Africa right now,” Dube said. “When I first started, there was no reggae.”

Dube started singing, he said, when he was 8, first in church, then at school. He started singing professionally in 1979.

“At that time, there was only disco and conga music, but I have always loved reggae, the beat and everything. It’s music that’s always been inside me. I always try to put the African influence in my music--the conga feel and some synthesizers. That’s just the way I do it.”

Reggae music, the music of international black liberation is message-oriented and by nature, preachy. And Dube’s music is full of messages, advice and observations about how crummy things are and how swell they should be.

“There is always a message in my music,” Dube said, “because music goes everywhere and knows no color or no barriers. It goes where politicians don’t go.”

* WHERE AND WHEN

Lucky Dube at La Casa de la Raza, 601 E. Montecito St., Santa Barbara, 965-7298, Friday, June 28, 9 p.m. $13 advance, $15 at the door.