Don’t Let Him Die: A Critical Exploration and Psycho-Humanistic Analyses of Some Selected Lucky Dube’s Reggae Songs (Part I)

Abstract

The famous young South African Reggae Star, Lucky Dube, met his untimely death on the 18th of October 2007. When this news was made public panic gripped the entire Black people of South Africa. Indeed, the magnitude of fear that that news came with caused mental anguish on the generality of his fans all over Africa. Following his demise, many scholars of African psychology started to ask and wonder interiorly about the grounds for Dube’s enormous popularity and stardom in the reggae music industry in which he had excelled. The key questions that came to mind at that time included the issue of what about his music that makes his variety of fans, both young and old, to place him in such a high esteem. Could this be due to the captivating melody and creative lyrics of his music or rather the superior quality and energetic flow of his reggae music performance? Whatever answers that one gives to these questions will surely depend on how much one knows about music as an art form, and the history and psychology of Dube as a human artist. However, what has remained an enigma is the fact that up to today sufficient attention has not been extended to the task of examining the psychological dimensions that embed his music, the story of his life up to the time of his death, and the key socio-cultural/political messages populating his major songs. The central purpose of this article is to response to this need.