Gospel singer David “Kukudoo” McDermott has passed away.

The singer’s family confirmed his death via his social media pages on Friday.

The performer, a huge favourite on the gospel scene, had reportedly been battling non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), a type of blood cancer.

He was 56 years old and is survived by his three children.

“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.

“The tests were sent to Florida to determine the best course of action to treat him but we never got back the results in time, it was supposed to take six weeks. David was too weak to do chemotherapy…he just ran out of time,” a distraught Nicholas Marks, the singer’s manager since 2018, told Jamaica Observer.

NHL is a common blood cancer originating in the lymphatic system when lymphocytes (B-cells or T-cells) mutate and grow uncontrollably, often forming tumours in lymph nodes.

“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.

He plans to release the singer’s final album, Life’s Journey, an album 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; yuh cyaan tell me it don’t have a purpose,” Marks said passionately.

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 explained.

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.

Minister of Culture and Entertainment Olivia Grange expressed sadness at the passing of the gospel artiste.

She hailed him as “a cultural force whose work celebrated African-derived spiritual traditions within Jamaican society”.

“Kukudoo was a strong performer who resonated across generations and social backgrounds,” said Grange, adding that his passing is “a great loss and he would be sorely missed”.