Tribute to David kukudoo mcdermot

 A Lecture in Tribute to David "Kukudoo" McDermott

Delivered by Fabian Stennett, Chief of Furry Town, on behalf of the Jamaican Maroon Community

Good afternoon. I want to begin not with sentiment, but with a question worth serious study: how does a nation preserve its spiritual memory when so much of that memory was never written down?

For the Maroon people, and for Jamaica's Revivalist tradition more broadly, the answer has always been sound — song, rhythm, and voice functioning as archive. Today I want to examine one man's contribution to that archive: David "Kukudoo" McDermott, born and raised in the March Pen area of Spanish Town, St Catherine.  

First, consider his origin. Kukudoo did not begin in a recording studio. He began at a nine-night — the "dead yard" gathering where communities keep vigil for the dead — when a church band's performance was captured on tape by an engineer present that evening.  (Jamaica Gleaner) This is not incidental biography; it is the whole thesis. Our tradition's most important cultural transmissions have historically occurred at the margins of formal institutions — in yards, at wakes, in improvised gatherings — rather than in concert halls. Kukudoo's career is a case study in that pattern.

Second, consider his output. Through recordings such as King David, Thank You Jesus, the Pole gospel medley, and Poco Man Rhythm, he did something specific and worth naming: he fused mento, a genre often treated by scholars as historical rather than living, with contemporary gospel. Observers have described his catalog as a rousing, mento-soaked style of gospel music,  which is another way of saying he refused to let mento be filed away as heritage. He kept it working.

Third, consider his labor. Before his music career, he worked as a factory hand at the former Bernard Lodge Sugar Estate,  (Jamaica Star) which places him within a very specific Jamaican lineage — the estate worker whose art was never separate from his labor, but grew out of it.

Fourth, consider his reach. His performances carried this Spanish Town, dead-yard, sugar-estate sound to audiences in the United States, England, and across the Caribbean, placing distinctly local ritual music on international stages without diluting it.

What, then, is the lesson for us as Maroon people? It is this: cultural preservation is rarely accomplished by institutions alone. It is carried, disproportionately, by individuals who take what is considered ordinary — a nine-night song, an estate worker's pastime — and insist, through sheer persistence, that it matters. Kukudoo did that work for Revivalist and gospel tradition. Furry Town recognizes it, and asks that his name be studied, not only mourned.

Thank you.