He rang his bell, for jus­tice, for free­dom, and tire­less­ly for the cul­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Sad­ly, just be­fore mid­night on Tues­day, Rap­so pi­o­neer Lu­ta­lo “Broth­er Re­sis­tance” Masim­ba, rang his last bell as he en­tered the arms of his an­ces­tors when the cul­tur­al stal­wart passed away at the age of 67.

His pass­ing has rocked the fra­ter­ni­ty, as many were not ex­pect­ing the man with the bright smile, raspy voice, and trade­mark-cov­ered dread­locks to be its lat­est ca­su­al­ty.

It was just on June 22; the fra­ter­ni­ty suf­fered the loss of es­teemed ca­lyp­so writer Win­ston “Jok­er” Devine. Even Masim­ba at that time in his last tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, said of his friend, “Cer­tain­ly, we have lost a big one…just a big one. A true cham­pi­on in the world of ca­lyp­so and a lit­er­ary gi­ant.”

To­day the gi­ant of Rap­so is no more and not on­ly are his col­leagues in the art­form shocked by his death, but his fam­i­ly too did not ex­pect the mu­si­cal gri­ot and au­thor of the au­thor of Rap­so Ex­plo­sion, to say good­bye.

“He was still very ac­tive and in the of­fice up to last week and do­ing what he was do­ing. He was ac­tu­al­ly writ­ing for his PHD at UWI, af­ter get­ting his mas­ters from UTT so, he was still very ac­tive,” his broth­er Neil Lewis told Guardian Me­dia in an in­ter­view.

High­light­ing all of his old­er broth­er’s ac­com­plish­ments and ser­vice to the cul­ture of T&T, in­clud­ing his Net­work Rid­dim Band hav­ing toured Eu­rope and Asia ex­ten­sive­ly and even re­quest­ed to per­form at the na­tion­al fan fest in Ger­many for the world cup in 2006, Lewis said he was still ex­pect­ing his broth­er to be around.

“He wasn’t ail­ing. He had some health is­sues like most of us do from time to time, be­fore be­ing man­aged. He just fell ill on the week­end and we took him to West­shore last night and he didn’t come back out,” he lament­ed.

While Lewis could not say when the fu­ner­al of Masim­ba would take place, he said the fam­i­ly was in the process of mak­ing arrange­ments.

Fra­ter­ni­ty re­mem­bers Masim­ba

Words es­caped long-time friend and band mem­ber Kare­ga Man­dela, who when con­tact­ed, told Guardian Me­dia, the death of a man with whom he shared a broth­er­hood for more than 46 years, was not easy to process. “We on­ly looked at foot­ball on Sun­day,” he re­called in a voice thick with tears.

Blast­ing Masim­ba’s mu­sic in the back­ground, he said “I just lis­ten­ing to his mu­sic. It’s very sur­re­al this time. That’s what I mean nah. I’m so sor­ry…I doh know…is a re­al shock­er then.”

In a pre­vi­ous doc­u­men­tary Masim­ba, born Roy Lewis, ex­plained the Rap­so genre orig­i­nat­ed by T&T Rap­so artist Lancelot Layne.

Speak­ing of its his­to­ry with pas­sion, the na­tion­al awardee, re­lat­ed then: “We say Rap­so mu­sic is like the po­et­ry of ca­lyp­so. Rap­so is the pow­er of the word in the rid­dim of the word. We does talk with a cer­tain kind of twang and we ex­press we po­et­ic emo­tion in that twang, and then when we blend the rhythms of the voice with the rhythms of the drums of skin—the first nat­ur­al in­stru­ment cre­at­ed by man on earth and the rhythms with the drums of steel, the last nat­ur­al in­stru­ment cre­at­ed by man, right here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, that is what we call ‘Rap­so rid­dim—a mu­sic for the peo­ple of strug­gle.”

But the Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege (QRC) alum­nus and 1970, Black Pow­er Move­ment ac­tivist, who hailed from East Dri­ve Riv­er in Port-of-Spain, style of mu­sic was not of­ten ac­cept­ed as the voice of the peo­ple of strug­gle, rather the mu­sic of rebels. This was ev­i­dent in 1983 when his band room and of­fice were ran­sacked and de­stroyed by po­lice. But de­ter­mined to con­tin­ue his mis­sion, Masim­ba pressed on with the torch passed to him by Layne.

A flyer with Brother Resistance featuring Rapso songs.

With Rap­so hits like the fa­mous Ring De Bell, Ah Can’t Take That, Ad­van­tage and his con­tin­u­ous cham­pi­oning for the growth of the genre, via work­shops and ra­dio pro­grammes, the younger, for which he paved the way, had this to say about Masim­ba.

“Re­sis­tance is a loss on sev­er­al lev­els. Is a loss for me per­son­al­ly be­cause we had a very close per­son­al re­la­tion­ship and he re­al­ly pushed Kin­dred in­to the lime light. You know he cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for us,” said pro­duc­er and Rap­so singer Omari Ash­by.

Stat­ing that there were just too many vet­er­ans with a wealth of knowl­edge pass­ing on, Gospel singer and pro­duc­er Isaac Black­man cred­it­ed Masim­ba for his singing break dur­ing the stag­ing of the Rap­so Fes­ti­val in the ear­ly 1990s

For Wen­dell Man­war­ren, lead vo­cal­ist of the Rap­so band 3 Canal, he too not­ed it was be­cause of Masim­ba the band was formed.

“If it were not for him, I don’t think we would have ac­tu­al­ly been record­ing mu­sic per se. It was he who point­ed out cer­tain things from very ear­ly, even be­fore we had touched a stu­dio. One of the first times we ac­tu­al­ly got in­to a stu­dio to sing was to sing back­grounds on one of his tracks, “he re­called.

NCC chair­man and friend of Masim­ba, Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters, who of­ten shared ad­min­is­tra­tive du­ties on var­i­ous cul­tur­al boards said T&T has lost an ar­ti­san of the cul­ture. He said he would miss his friend dear­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly for his “in­tel­lec­tu­al and sound ad­vice he was al­ways pre­pared to give as a cul­tur­ist.”