Gilli Smyth, co-founder of Gong, has died aged 83.
The news was broken by her son, Orlando Allen.
He said: “She passed amongst loved ones reading poetry and singing at exactly 12pm Australian time today. She is flying to the infinite through all the bardots as we speak so all your prayers of light, love gratitude and beaming energies are a shining light for her.
“Bless her psychedelic cotton socks, she will be in our and deeply in my heart forever. One of the strongest, most loving forgiving and powerful shakti being mums I have ever known.
“I give thanks for the blessing of her her being her example and shakti mumma presence and happy she is out of pain now and soon to be with, Daevid her dingo Virgin and all her favourite animals.”
Born Gillian “Gilli” Mary Smyth in June, 1933, she studied at King’s College, London, before a brief spell teaching at the Sorbonne. In 1968, she began doing performance poetry with the Soft Machine, founded by her partner and long-time collaborator, Daevid Allen.
She co-founded Gong with Allen and Smyth also worked on spin-off projects, Mother Gong and Planet Gong.
In 1978, Smyth released a solo album Mother. She emigrated to Australia in 1982 where she continued performance poetry often under the name Shakti Yoni.
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