Roger Lucey and his music sustained me during the years of apartheid.
Some time back I was listening to a Zen priest talking about his views on life and happiness. “Pay attention to your life!” was all he said. I have found it invaluable advice to follow. The problem, of course, is reminding yourself in the midst of the often frustrating and anxiety-ridden flow of existence to stop: And pay attention to what is happening in your life. It may not always be positive, but its real, and there are always lessons to be learned.
When I was a young student at Wits. I went to see a concert in the Great Hall by a burgeoning songwriter/singer Roger Lucey. It was 1982 and South Africa was experiencing the first waves of political violence that finally led, a decade or more later, to the end of apartheid.
Roger wrote and sang of that political moment. I liked his music and the way it spoke to me and the South Africa of that time, but at that concert I wasn’t fully engaged at the beginning of the evening. I was trying to impress a girl I fancied and was concentrating on her. It soon became obvious she wasn’t very impressed by me, so I soon gave up bothering her and focused on the music and the lyrics of the songs.
I don’t remember them all, but they were powerful, deeply felt songs about the injustice in our land at that time – and I began to pay attention.
The first song I recall was a ballad about the death in detention of an ordinary black South African, Lungile Tabalaza, who got caught up in political events and died in police custody in 1978
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