Gospel singer ‘Kukudoo’ dies after battle with cancer

Gospel singer David ‘Kukudoo’ McDermott has died, his family confirmed via the singer’s social media pages on Friday. The performer, a huge favourite on the gospel scene, had reportedly been battling non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer.

He was 56 years old.

“It is with a heavy heart that we, the family of David ‘Kukudoo’ McDermott, have to tell the public that he passed this morning…at this time we ask for grace and respect in our time of grief,” the post stated.

The singer was diagnosed with the disease in late February of this year.

“Blood samples were sent to Florida to determine what was the best course of action to treat him but we never got back the results in time. David was too weak to do chemotherapy…he just ran out of time,” a distraught Nicholas Marks, the singer’s manager since 2018, told Observer Online.

McDermott is survived by three children.

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) symptoms often start with painless, swollen lymph nodes in the neck, armpit, or groin, sometimes described as feeling like rubbery lumps under the skin. Other common symptoms include persistent fatigue, drenching night sweats, unexplained weight loss, and fever.

“He was a genuine person and a passionate person, and you could see that…in anything he put his hand on, he put his all in it, and you saw that with his music,” Marks said.

Marks will be releasing the singer’s final album, Life’s Journey, a 10-track project that he and Kukudoo had been working on but which had been frequently delayed because of the singer’s health challenges.

“This album must have some greater purpose. From we decided to do the album, he began to get sick, yu caan tell me it don’t have a purpose!” Marks said passionatedly.

Fast forward three years later, and only 10 tracks have been completed in Kukudoo’s final project.

“Many things happened and we had to pause and this year, we decided to go aggressively towards completing it …we wanted to do 12 tracks but only 10 were completed,” Marks added.

A former machine operator at the now-defunct Bernard Lodge Sugar Estate, Kukudoo got his start singing at nine nights, or ‘dead yards’, under the name King David.

As fate would have it, one night, the church band was playing at a nine-night, when the engineer recorded Kukudoo’s performance and put it on a CD. Within a few weeks, hit songs such as See People Business and Leave It Alone dominated the airwaves, and his songs were played frequently in buses and taxis in the public transportation system. King David was now a star.

His singing blossomed into a full-time career and he was a regular fixture on the annual Jamaica Independence Gala, where he wowed audiences with his brand of rousing mento-soaked gospel songs.

“As a performer, he was loved by many across the world, one who was notable especially in the United States. When you mention any gospel artiste out of Jamaica, Kukudoo has to be part of the conversation, he has to be mentioned. He was a wonderful performer and a genuine individual,” Marks said.