Music stopped for family when Ray died
DOZENS of mourners are expected to gather at Mbombela Stadium for legendary musician Ray Phiri’s funeral service today.
The South African jazz great passed away on July 12 after a lengthy fight with lung cancer. He was 70. “We understood he was just not ours. He belonged to all of South Africa. So we as a family had to bend a little to share him with the rest of the country,” said the jazz maestro’s son, Akhona Phiri.
The 32-year-old sought to clarify confusion that arose before his father’s death in which crowd-fund initiatives were started for Phiri.
“Every single day my father spent in hospital, he paid for it out of his pocket. He didn’t have a medical aid,” Akhona said. “We didn’t necessarily need to have a fund. This was a notion out of the goodness of people’s hearts. It’s not like our family or my father wasn’t able to foot his bill.”
“It’s been a difficult period,” Akhona said, adding the family had lost their pillar of strength.
“Now I don’t have that person to call when days are dark, when life gets confusing and I need a perspective on things. ‘Pops’ to me was a springboard. If I didn’t have energy, he was there to help me,” he said.
On Thursday, Phiri’s two other children, Pholo and Lentle, paid an emotional tribute to their father at a memorial service, also at the Mbombela Stadium.
They described Phiri as one of the most humble beings and said his humility was a quality to which he aspired.
“He had a lot of humility. It didn’t matter if you were rich and spent your days in boardrooms or lived under a bridge, my father interacted with everyone with the same humility,” Akhona said.
The jazz, fusion and mbaqanga musician was the founding member of the Cannibals in the 1970s and, when the group disbanded, Phiri founded Stimela.
This band produced gold and platinum-selling albums such as Fire, Passion and Ecstasy, Look, Listen and Decide, Whispers in the Deep and many more.