RING DE BELL
Waking to the news of the passing of Rapso griot Brother Resistance (Lutalo Masimba) has really rocked my world. Although he is a couple years younger than I, we shared a lot in common.
Beside originating in Laventille, he from "behind de bridge," I from Success Village, we both attended Queen's Royal College (QRC). At roll call on mornings, he answered to the name Roy Lewis but later changed it to Lutalo Masimba as he became more consciously immersed in the Black Power movement of the 70s. On the music stage he was known as Brother Resistance.
Consciousness in both Resistance and I were nurtured in QRC by some of the teachers we encountered, men like Rudy Piggott, Schofield Pilgrim, Van Stewart, Ian Barnes, Winston Douglas and Bill Bason.
The Black Power Movement, said to be the motivator of Resistance's consciousness, is dated at 1970, but in 1970, Resistance was still a student at QRC and was already well doctrinated in black pride and dignity.
Resistance was in the vanguard of the QRC Students' Council, established by then principal Van Stewart, and which was the tip of the spear for the QRC Steelband being the first school to play mas in the Queen's Park Savannah on carnival day, its mas presentation titled "The Hordes of Rambutu."
Poetry also kept Resistance and I close, he with his own unique style which actually won him first place in the National Schools Poetry Competition. He was influenced by the late Lancelot Kebu Layne, something that shaped the DNA of the Rapso genre of music. At the time, as a member of the Ujamaa Compound in Petit Valley, I too performed conscious poetry at a number of Black Power concerts.
And, then there was pan. While pursuing tertiary education at UWI, Resistance played pan with birdsong Steel Orchestra. Me, studying Computer Science at IBM, played with Phase II Pan Groove, Pandemonium and 3rd World Symphony.
While I have lost a brother and a friend, calypso has lost a pioneer, composer, performer, administrator and visionary. In his interview with me on iEnt Live recently, the last before his untimely passing, Resistance spoke of his vision for taking Trinbago Unified Calypso Organisation (TUCO), the movement he chaired, into the future. Also a past chairman of the Copyright Organisation of T&T (COTT) and a sitting commissioner of the National Carnival Commission (NCC), amongst his dreams was establishing a mechanism to benefit calypsonians who had fallen on tough times, a Calypso Pension.
Farewell my brother, ring de bell with our ancestors.