Born in 1936, guitarist, composer, arranger, bandleader, and producer Ebo Taylor has been a central figure of the Ghanaian music scene for over six decades. In the late 1950es he was active in the influential Highlife bands the Stargazers and the Broadway Dance Band. In 1962 he took his own group, the Black Star Highlife Band, to London, which led to collaborations with Fela Kuti and other African musicians in Britain at the time.
Ebo Taylor | Ayesama
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=JpdyFTCDjuw
Returning to Ghana, he worked as a producer, crafting recordings for Pat Thomas, C.K. Mann, and others, as well as exploring his own projects, combining traditional Ghanaian material with Afrobeat, Jazz, and Funk rhythms to create his own recognizable sound in the 70s. Taylor’s work became popular internationally with Hiphop producers in the 21st century, which led to the release of “Love and Death” on Strut Records in 2010, his first internationally distributed album.
Ebo Taylor | On Recording Appia Kwa Bridge
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=rIwON8XXaaw
Its success prompted Strut to issue the stellar retrospective “Life Stories: Highlife & Afrobeat Classics 1973-1980″, in the spring of 2011. In may 2012, a third Strut album, the deeply personal “Appia Kwa Bridge”, appeared. It proofs that at 76, Taylor is still intensely creative and focused, mixing traditional Fante songs and chants with children’s rhymes and personal matters into his own sharp vision of Highlife.
Ebo Taylor
Thursday, 03 April 2014 | 20:00 CET
Lido | Cuvrystraße 7 | 10997 Berlin/Kreuzberg
ebotaylor-loveanddeath.com | lido-berlin.de
