It was a farewell service fitting for cultural royalty.

The Grand Stand of the Queen’s Park Savannah was filled with family, friends and colleagues of the late Dexter ‘Blaxx’ Stewart on Wednesday morning, as they gathered to celebrate the life and work of the beloved entertainer.

Blaxx died last Monday, after being hospitalized with Covid-19.

At his celebration of life, there was a line-up of performances in his honor, including Super Blue, a gospel duet by Genisa St. Hilaire and Terri Lyons and Lil Vaughn, who thanked the late entertainer for giving him a start in the music industry.

Beyond the performances, it was the tributes that gave testimony to the indelible mark Blaxx left on the industry.

Roy Cape, who first began working with Blaxx in 1998 after a meeting in Jamaica, praised the late entertainer for his dedication to the craft and his chameleon-like talent.

“Blaxx was a champion. He could sing Lionel Richie, Bob Marley, Buju Banton. He could’ve done soca, he could’ve done calypso. A consummate performer,” he remembered.

Media mogul, music producer and OJO boss Anthony Chow Lin On recalled his many reasonings with the late entertainer.

“This dude called Blaxx was very special to me. Everyone in this room would have their own personal stories, fun memories with Blaxx. For those of us who got phone calls at 8am…we’d have some very interesting conversation, always positive and always about the culture. I would like to establish one of the concepts that Blaxx often spoke about. He’d say, ‘Tony, our industry is not a whole heap of bands and individual singers…Trinidad and Tobago is not several bands and artistes. It is one band, many musicians and many singers.’ I often thought about that and it is true. This is the code that he lived by,” Chow Lin On said.

While fans knew him as Blaxx the entertainer, his family spoke of another side of him.

“Blaxx was not so proud just to be an artist and to represent Trinidad and Tobago and our culture… but most importantly to me, and this is the part that touches me the most… he was a proud dad. He’s the kind of man that when he spoke about his children his eyes would light up, he would beam with pride. His children meant the world to him. And my children as well meant the world to Uncle Blaxx,” his sister Desma Bijou remembered.

Following the service at the Savannah, there was a street parade around Port of Spain, where music trucks played from the late entertainer’s long catalogue of hits, with fans free to chip behind the truck in his honor.