The Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) is mourn­ing the death of its pres­i­dent Lu­ta­lo Masim­ba—Broth­er Re­sis­tance. In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, TU­CO said it was an­nounc­ing his pass­ing with “great shock and sad­ness.”

TU­CO said Masim­ba be­fore be­ing elect­ed as pres­i­dent served as the first Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er and Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. It said Masim­ba al­so served as a Com­mis­sion­er at the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion, the Vice Pres­i­dent of the Copy­right Mu­sic Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (COTT), and Vice Pres­i­dent of As­so­ci­a­tion Caribbean Copy­right So­ci­eties as well as a di­rec­tor of the Peo­ple’s Mall Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.

TU­CO said, “He was a cul­tur­al ac­tivist and a Rap­so artiste of in­ter­na­tion­al re­pute. Best known for his Rap­so po­et­ry with the Net­work Rap­so Rid­dim Band, he has toured the US, Cana­da, Asia, the Pa­cif­ic, Eng­land and Eu­rope, Venezuela and the Caribbean.

As a cul­tur­al ac­tivist, re­searcher and ed­u­ca­tor, Mr Masim­ba has con­duct­ed sem­i­nars, work­shops and lec­ture demon­stra­tions at schools in the Caribbean, North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope. He is the au­thor of Rap­so Ex­plo­sion (Karsa Press UK) a col­lec­tion of Rap­so po­et­ry.”

It al­so re­mind­ed that Masim­ba was award­ed the Hum­ming Bird Sil­ver Medal in 1992 for his con­tri­bu­tion to the cul­tur­al arts and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment.

TU­CO said Masim­ba would be re­mem­bered as a “ hard­work­ing, dili­gent and fu­tur­is­tic Pres­i­dent. He cared deeply about the wel­fare of our mem­bers. He pushed for recog­ni­tion of ca­lyp­so and rap­so mu­sic on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage. Mr Masim­ba fore­saw an Or­gan­i­sa­tion that will be self-suf­fi­cient and worked day and night in re­al­iz­ing this vi­sion. Mr Masim­ba was a true pa­tri­ot, a leader, and loved his coun­try.”

TU­CO al­so ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to his fam­i­ly, friends, the TU­CO mem­ber­ship, and the ca­lyp­so/rap­so fam­i­ly.