Ebo Taylor has been a pivotal figure on the Ghanaian music scene for over six decades. In the late ’50s he was active in the influential highlife bands the Stargazers and the Broadway Dance Band. In 1962, Taylor took his group, the Black Star Highlife Band, to London. In London, Taylor collaborated with Nigerian afrobeat star Fela Kuti as well as other African musicians in Britain at the time.
Returning to Ghana, Taylor worked as a producer, crafting recordings for Pat Thomas, C.K. Mann, and others, as well as exploring solo projects, combining traditional Ghanaian material with afrobeat, jazz, and funk rhythms to create his own recognizable sound in the ’70s. He was the in-house guitar player, arranger, and producer for Essiebons, founded by Dick Essilfie-Bondzie.
Taylor’s work became popular internationally with hip-hop producers in the 21st century. In 1992, Ghetto Concept included his afrobeats in their music. In 2008, Ebo Taylor met the Berlin-based musicians of the Afrobeat Academy band, including saxophonist Ben Abarbanel-Wolff, which led to the release of the album Love and Death with Strut Records his first internationally distributed album. In 2010, Usher used a sample from Taylor’s song “Heaven” for “She Don’t Know” with Ludacris. He collaborated with the Afrobeat Academy in Berlin in 2011. In 2017, his Ghanaian funk anthem “Come Along,” was popular among DJs.
The success of Love and Death prompted Strut to issue the retrospective Life Stories: Highlife & Afrobeat Classics 1973-1980, in the spring of 2011. A year later, in 2012, a third Strut album, Appia Kwa Bridge, was released. Appia Kwa Bridge showed that at 77 years old, Taylor remained creative, mixing traditional Fante songs and chants with children’s rhymes and personal stories into his own sharp vision of highlife. He performed at the 2015 edition of the annual Stanbic Jazz Festival along with Earl Klugh, Ackah Blay and others.
Uncle Ebo, as he’s known by locals in Saltpond, the small Ghanaian fishing town he’s called home since birth, has spent most of this year in his home studio observing Covid-19 protocols and recording new material for his third studio album in 10 years.
Taylor’s influence can be seen across genres today, particularly with the emergence of afrobeats in the early 2000s, fusing afrobeat and highlife with EDM, hip-hop and reggae. Taylor is quick to highlight the fact that the popularity of afrobeats has coincided with its embrace of authentically African arrangements and a departure from heavy hip-hop and R&B sounds which he believes could seem forced.
According to what he told CNN STYLE;
“The music we made was real music, it made you stop and think,” he said. “It’s not surprising that people are connecting with afrobeats more now that it is embracing elements from the music we made.”
While Taylor is likely to slow down on touring, he intends to continue making music. “It’s what I love to do, it’s who I am,” he said. He intends to introduce his music to younger and more mainstream audiences. Like his hero Nkrumah, who Taylor believes is unique among African leaders past and present for his concern for the common man, Taylor wants to be remembered as a man of the people not as a rock- star.
“I want to be remembered for my music, for my art and as Ebo Taylor the man,”
he said.
Additional information Courtesy CNN STYLE