Guyana-born in­ter­na­tion­al mu­si­cian Den­nis De Souza has died. De Souza, who was known among his Caribbean coun­ter­parts as a famed Caribbean pi­anist, died on Sat­ur­day in Cana­da, af­ter bat­tling with Parkin­son's dis­ease. He was 77. In a Guyanese ar­ti­cle on Sat­ur­day, it stat­ed that De Souza, of Ma­haica, East Coast De­mer­ara, died at 8.18 am in his sleep at the Cred­it Val­ley Hos­pi­tal, Toron­to, where he had been a pa­tient for the past two weeks.

The re­port al­so stat­ed that the vet­er­an mu­si­cian, who last per­formed pub­licly 18 months ago, was suf­fer­ing from Parkin­son's dis­ease and in re­cent weeks pneu­mo­nia. His two sons and a sis­ter were at his side at the time of death. De Souza's wife died two years ago.

The ar­ti­cle re­count­ed the ear­ly days of De Souza and how he fell in love in with T&T. De Souza, who had an in­nate abil­i­ty for mu­sic, start­ed play­ing at the ten­der of age of nine years and com­plet­ed a three-year mu­sic course in sev­en months. De Souza loved to play mu­sic by Pat Boone, Jim Reeves, Nat King Cole, Bing Cros­by and Dick Hayes.

But at the age of 20, while De Souza was on his way to Eng­land via T&T to study mu­sic com­po­si­tion, he fell in love with T&T and the ship sailed with­out him. But, it wasn't the mu­sic that first cap­tured De Souza; it was an­oth­er love -crick­et. While De Souza stayed in T&T, he played crick­et with Har­vard and Queen's Park CC.

Af­ter one of their big vic­to­ries, De Souza and his crick­et pals-Willie Ro­driquez, Ben Kan­hai, Son­ny Ra­mad­hin, the Davis Broth­ers and Joey Carew went to the Pent­house, Port-of-Spain to cel­e­brate. He was asked by the res­i­dent band­leader, Choy Am­ing to play pi­ano with the band. Up to 2003, De Souza held a three-year con­tract at the Hilton ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.

Tri­ni Trib­ute

Mean­while, some of T&T's mu­si­cal stal­warts and icons with­in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try re­mem­bered De Souza as a great per­son and a Trinidad icon. Ger­ald Agos­ti­ni, pop­u­lar ra­dio pre­sen­ter, who in his ear­li­er days host­ed a pro­gramme on Ra­dio 100 called the Sat­ur­day Spe­cial, where he on­ly played lo­cal mu­sic said in the ear­ly 1980's and 90's, De Souza's CD was the best on the mar­ket.

Agos­ti­ni said De Souza did a lot of pop­u­lar cov­er tunes us­ing dif­fer­ent gen­res of mu­sic like latin and ca­lyp­so. "He was very pop­u­lar and was well known with­in the in­dus­try at the time. We were all friends. We made a lot of records," Agos­ti­ni re­called.

Mervyn Telfer said what he re­mem­bered best about De Souza was his per­son­al­i­ty. "He had a knack for im­pos­ing his per­son­al­i­ty on his mu­sic and con­nect­ing with his au­di­ence." Telfer, who has been in show busi­ness for 60 years and a Trinidad Ra­dio an­nounc­er in 1950's de­scribed De Souza as a fab­u­lous hu­man be­ing, a ded­i­cat­ed fam­i­ly man and the best pi­anist ever passed through the Caribbean.

Even though Telfer was caught off guard by the news, he quick­ly took a run down mem­o­ry lane when De Souza was one of the fea­tured acts at the restau­rant at Hol­i­day Inn now called Crowne Plaza ho­tel. "It was won­der­ful to go there to dine and dance to De Souza's mu­sic. He could have played every­thing – bal­lards, pop, clas­si­cal and ro­man­tic mu­sic," Telfer said.

Dur­ing his time in Trinidad, Tefler said he mar­ried a Trinida­di­an by the name of An­gela Camps. Af­ter which, he went off to Cana­da, where he lived and re­cent­ly died. Tefler said his deep­est sym­pa­thy goes out to the De Souza's fam­i­ly.