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Obitiary Lucky Dube (1964 -2007)

Lucky Dube was a South African reggae musician and Rastafarian. He recorded 22 albums in Zulu, English and Afrikaans in a 25-year period and was South Africa's biggest-selling reggae artist. Dube was murdered in the Johannesburg suburb of Rosettenville on the evening of 18 October 2007. The most successful African reggae artist of his generation, "reggae king" Lucky Dube cut a sprightly and warm-hearted figure on the world stage. Inspired by Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff's messages of black pride, and with a vocal style largely modelled on that of Peter Tosh, he pioneered a distinctively South African variant of reggae, which, while not musically radical, was lyrically progressive and politically informed. His songs were spiced with dashes of soul, gospel and the occasional power-ballad flourish, but also influenced by the local style of mbaqanga ("township jive"), which he began recording in 1981. Singing initially in Zulu and even Afrikaans, but later almost exclusively in English, he switched to reggae in 1984, and by the early 1990s had eclipsed Ivory Coast's Alpha Blondy to become Africa's biggest selling reggae artist.

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