Courtney Leiba was a class act on the local and world stage

He was a passionate performer who played the drums everywhere from outside the Wanniassa shops to on The Ed Sullivan Show in the United States.

Before moving to Australia, the West Indian-born musician was also a member of the Grammy-nominated band the Esso Trinidad Tripoli Steel Band.

The band played at Expo 67 in Montreal, Canada, where it came to the attention of flamboyant performer Liberace who engaged the band for a tour across the United States for four years.

Mr Leiba was married to Marion Leiba for 47 years. They met in Trinidad 49 years ago and eventually made a home together in Kambah.

Marion was working in New Zealand when she made a spur-of-the-moment decision to take up a job as a volcanologist and seismologist at the University of West Indies in Trinidad, where she met her future husband.

"I was just walking up the main street of Port-of-Spain and I heard this voice say, 'Enjoying your holidays?'. So I had to turn around and explain that just because I had white skin didn't mean I was on holidays," she told The Canberra Times in 2015.

The couple - with their baby daughter Nadine - moved to Tasmania in 1977 and then to Canberra in 1981 where Marion worked with the Bureau of Mineral Resources, later the Australian Geological Survey Organisation.

Courtney continued to play and teach the drums and ukulele and congas.

"He was very outgoing, he just loved socialising with people and chatting with people," Mrs Leiba said on Thursday.

"Irrespective, of whether they were the Governor-General, as he did once, or whether it happened to be the bloke cleaning the drains outside our house, he was really keen to chat to all of them."

He was well-known throughout Canberra, but also the world for his musicianship.

In a tribute, PANZ - the home for steel bands and steelpan players in Australia and New Zealand - said Mr Leiba became "globally known as the steel band scratcher-man".

"The recognition that [the band] Tripoli got touring with Liberace led to the band's nomination for a Grammy Award in 1972 under the category ethnic and traditional recordings," the tribute read.

Something of a social campaigner, Mr Leiba was also made a life member of the Labor Party. He and Mrs Leiba had recently protested the closure of the Bendigo Bank in Wanniassa.

They couple had two children, Nadine and Kenrick. Nadine has two children, Griffin, 16, and Orion, 14. Kenrick, who lives in Sydney, has two daughters, Ruby, five, and Rose, two.

Nadine plans to write a book about her father's incredible life, which started on a cocoa farm in Trinidad and included stints working in a storeroom and as a law clerk.

"It's like he's lived a zillion lives," she said.

Mr Leiba had been in poor health for more than a year and had spent four months in the Canberra Hospital where he died, surrounded by his family.

Funeral details are to come.