Family, friends remember Brother Resistance: ‘My daddy was the best’

Nalo Lewis, daughter of Lutalo Makossa Masimba, better known by his stage name Brother Resistance, honoured her father on Monday during a tribute to the rapso icon hosted by the Trinidad and Tobago Emancipation Support Committee.

In a virtual event for the committee’s 2021 Pan African Festival to commemorate the Emancipation Holiday, Lewis said with a smile, “it may sound like I’m bragging, but my daddy was the best daddy.”

Fans of calypso and rapso awoke to the news of his passing on Wednesday.

Lewis recalled memories with her father during the tribute.

“I can’t think of a moment where I’ve disappointed my father,” she said, “and if I did, he never said it.”

She said he was never harsh with her nor dictated to her what she should do but would instead ask questions to help guide her on the best way to deal with a situation.

Lewis said, as a child, she told her father she wanted to be a calypsonian to which he replied, “If you want to be a calypsonian, you have to write your own songs.”

She said she wrote a song that her father helped her rehearse.

“We used to go to the mall and at (my father’s) shop, he told Super Blue and All Rounder, who were all there on a Friday once, that I wrote a calypso,” she joked.

She said she was encouraged to perform for the calypso legends.

“It was an amazing thing to have all of these people you see on posters and commercials singing and (give advice), but for him, it was just, ‘mM daughter wrote her own song.’ He was so proud.”

Lewis said her father loved all his children equally.

“There were no favourites. He loved each of us the way we needed to be loved.”

Masimba’s brother Neil Lewis said he was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder in 2015 caused by many years of smoking. He said he managed his health appointments but was told he had developed cancer in his right lung two months ago.

“Resistance was a warrior,” he said. “He continued his usual routines…and attended meetings up to the week before his passing.”

He said Masimba was taken to West Shore Medical on Tuesday night, where he died shortly after midnight.

He said Masimba was given the best medical care. “If he were here, he would extend gratitude to his medical team (who) reached out to me to extend condolences.”]

He also recalled memories of his brother, who was six years older. He said he was given the name “Resistance” at their alma mater, Queen’s Royal College.

He said by the time he joined his brother in QRC, he was already the lifeblood of the school and had been given the name, and he was called Young Resistance.

He said in a recent chat with some past QRC old boys who were preparing a tribute to Masimba, jokes were made about his birth name, Roy Lewis.

“Roy is the first part of royal,’ they said.

“I don’t know what my parents were thinking when they named him, but it has its origins in Anglo-French with Bengal-Indian influences, and means king.”