Uncle Yoosi has passed on. I should be saying ‘Professor Ebenezer Laing’ since I am really not a blood relative. It feels more natural to call him Uncle Yoosi. This is why.

I had gone into the Pre-Med programme in the University of Ghana as a young lad. After the first Zoology practical I went over to the Botany department just across. It wasn’t difficult to find his office – he was the head of department. He was working at the bench in his office when I knocked. He invited me in. The conversation which went on after the courtesies was something like this. I started, ‘I know you are a pianist ... I see you on television all the time, I’d like you to play with me....I mean accompany me - I am a violinist.’ He looked at me with a gentle consternation in his face. ‘Hey, young man, I don’t have time for this sort of thing. D’you know what it means to run a department like this? Go and find somebody your age!’ With that he swivelled round on his seat and continued his apparently all-absorbing work at the bench, his back towards me. I didn’t leave … not in a rude or belligerent sort of way. I simply stood there possibly looking rather awkward but determined to get a kinder response. He must have sensed the obduracy. After a few minutes he turned round again, ‘Hey, young man, you didn’t hear me..?’ I still did not breathe one word in response. This time he must have reckoned I would not be leaving despite the effort at intimidation. After a few more minutes he relented, ‘OK, you can come to my home, Bungalow number 5 on East Legon Road close to the Estate Department at 4.30. There are 3 children and they may be quite noisy ...’ This was in 1970, nearly 45 years ago!

That evening we had our first practice together. A few weeks and several practice sessions later I participated in a musical soirée in his home. It was novel, exciting and so fulfilling for me. It would be the first of several such events in his home or that of Professor Amonoo on the Legon campus. So varied and full was our musical programme we played at the Specialist Music Academy, Winneba, Goethe Institute, Osu (then), and British Council. The platform on which we featured most often together was ‘Break-for-Music’ a Sunday evening programme, on GBC TV, then the only television station. More recently we have played together on occasions including the 50th anniversary of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences at the Goethe Institute, Cantonments 2009. The last time we performed together was on the occasion of the 80 birthday anniversary of Professor Amonoo in March 2012 at Ofankor.

Whenever we worked together in the past, it was a very vigorous, focussed and intense scene – he at the piano and I on the fiddle. It was always such a vibrant picture in his home. He also played the Oboe – indeed he taught the instrument in the School of Performing Arts at some point. He also did the piano accompaniment for candidates from the National Symphony Orchestra offering the higher music diplomas of the ABRSM (Associated Board of the Royal School of Music, UK). Thus full was his musical life. So, it was such a pictorial contrast on the day in February this year, when his wife, Auntie Mildred died – his tall and now much weaker frame needing to be shepherded slowly and gently to his wife’s side. What a melancholic but solemn contrast!

Then there was the other side. For the 3 or so years that I was on the main campus, Legon Hall, Uncle Yoosi would now and again purchase a book from the University Bookshop with the signature ‘To Sam, from Ebenezer Laing’ and drop it in my cubby hole at the Porters’ Lodge. Thus books ranging from music to genetics came into my possession. But don’t think it was just cosmetic – he would be asking me the next time we met about the content and the lessons learnt from them. So in addition to the learning-load in the course I was pursuing, I had to be abreast with material in the books he gave to me. This affectionate posture did not cease and was extended to my late wife also when we started going out, shortly before leaving the main campus in late 1973. The last of these books was a Wright Piano tutor 2004 – I had taken my youngster to visit him and he was encouraging him also to consider a similar musical path.

Uncle Yoosi’s last several months had been one of illness. I had often passed his home in the evening on my way from work. Unlike in the past we would not be vigorously making music - I would just sit quietly and simply ‘watch with him.’ In the initial phase we might chat briefly but as the illness progressed he spoke very little. The scene often left me meditating on the paths of fortune that brought me so close to the life of a person so accomplished and prominent, and yet so accessible to ordinary people like myself.

I was called to his home at REDCO, Madina, by Kwamina on the morning of Sunday 19th April, being as it were, the older of the siblings, though non-biological. Uncle Yoosi would be taking his last breath in a few hours on that day bringing to an end a life so busy, so full and yet so available and contributory to other lives such as mine.

I and the remainder of my family will miss you a lot, Uncle Yoosi.

Uncle Yoosi, Yaa wo dzogbang [Sleep Peacefully].