Edi Fitzroy gets musical farewell 

Members of Jamaica’s musical fraternity joined other mourners at Tent City, Seventh Day Adventist Church in Portmore, St Catherine on Sunday to bid farewell to reggae singer Fitzroy Edwards, better known at Edi Fitzroy.

Edwards, who died March 4 after a brief illness, was eulogised as someone who cared a lot for his family, in a light-hearted funeral that for the most part had congregants smiling.

Music producer Delroy Thompson, who worked with Edwards on many of his music, said they used to call him “per di”, because of his request for per diem, while they were on tour. According to Delroy, this Edwards demanded, saying he needed it to “take care of his family”.

According to Delroy, Edwards’ family meant so much to him that, even when the singer’s career was reaching its peak, and he had tried to influence the latter to leave his full-time job at the now defunct Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation (JBC) to take on music fulltime, Edwards refused because he wanted to guarantee a steady income to support his family.

Veteran dancehall artiste Major Mackerel said Edwards was more like a father to him, and called on the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, to make more effort to honour musical icons before they die.

“We love Bob Marley yu nuh, but a nuh him alone duh di thing. We love Peter Tosh yuh nuh, but a nuh him alone duh di thing. We love Bunny Wailer yuh nuh, but a nuh him alone duh the thing,” Mackerel said, making reference to the famous Wailers trio who have been given national honours.

He then closed his tribute by saying: “Edi mi a guh join yuh unuh, but mi nuh ready yet.”

That brought on a round of laughter from the hundreds who were inside the church.

Radio disc jockey, Anthony String, said that Edwards worked on a radio programme on Roots FM, said that he was there to pay tribute “to a man that has done so much for the music industry.”

He called for the music fraternity to “learn to work together” and said that Edwards believed in love and togetherness.

For his tribute, percussionist, Bongo Herman, called on a number of singers and deejays at the service to gather at the front of the church, where they did Marley’s iconic song, Fly Away Home, with him beating drum.

Merciless meanwhile reminded the church that both himself and Edwards came from the same region in Clarendon before he went on to sample Edi Fitzroy’s song, Princess Black, while imitating the singer.

Pastor Howard Grant called on present artistes to imitate the writing pattern of Edwards.

Grant, before preaching about going to a better place after death, said, “now a days artistes need to look at his songs and learn to pen music. They are doing music that breed violence.

He mentioned Edwards’ The Gun as an example of how to write and asked that the younger generation of artiste take a page from Edwards’ book.

“I grew up on music like these that build a sense of direction that many artistes are not doing today through their work,” Grant said.