Toots Hibbert (file photo)—
A private thanksgiving service for reggae and ska pioneer, Frederick Nathaniel ‘Toots’ Hibbert, will be held tomorrow, Thursday, October 15, at the chapel at Perry’s Funeral Home, outside of Spanish Town, St Catherine.
It is scheduled to begin at 11:00 a.m.
His body will then be interred at the Dovecot Memorial Park in the parish, instead of his birthplace in Treadlight district, May Pen, Clarendon.
However, close family sources say that there is no plan for Toots to take the country road back home.
“My uncle would have wanted to come back home. He sings about the country road in one of his biggest songs, and he is always visiting us down here. Him never leaves us out. But from Miss Doreen dem [Toots’ widow and some of the children] come down here and choose the land couple weeks now, we don’t hear not a word. No grave digging not going on down here and everybody in Treadlight – my mother, sisters, my aunt – ah ask me what is happening,” Wilbert Hibbert, Toots’ nephew, said in an interview last night.
A distraught Wilbert, who was planning to fast and pray, as he does on Wednesdays, said he was again going “on my knees” for his uncle, hoping that he will get what he calls a good send-off.
Toots, 77, died at the University Hospital of the West Indies on September 11, nearly two weeks after he tested for COVID-19.
His death caused an outpouring within the music industry locally and internationally and made headlines around the world.
Major newspapers and websites paid tribute to the Jamaican music icon who is credited with naming the genre reggae.
Toots won a Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album in 2005 with True Love.
In 2012, he was awarded the Order of Jamaica, the country’s fourth highest award, for his contribution to Jamaican music.
You must log in to post a comment.