The highlife bandleader Ebo Taylor, a legend in the world of Ghanaian music, has passed away. As The Guardian reports, Taylor's son Kweku announced the news of his passing on Sunday. No specific cause of death has been reported. Taylor was 90.
Ebo Taylor, first known as Deroy Taylor, was born on Ghana's Cape Coast at a time when Ghana was under British colonial rule. He started out playing piano as a child, and he switched to guitar as highlife, a Ghanaian genre inspired by big-band jazz and Caribbean music, started to take off. He played with a number of highlife bands, including the Stargazers, the Broadway Dance Band, and the Black Star Highlife Band. In the early '60s, he temporarily moved to London, where he studied at the Eric Gilder School Of Music and become close with Nigerian afrobeat giant Fela Kuti, who was also studying in London at the time.
In 1964, Taylor returned to Ghana, formed more highlife bands, and become the in-house guitarist and producer at the highlife label Essiebons. He also put out solo records, which brought Afrobeat and funk influences to highlife in the '70s. Starting in 2000, he also taught music at the University Of Ghana. International recognition came late in life, but Taylor's music became much more heralded in the past 15 years. His album Love And Death came out internationally in 2010, and a series of reissues followed. Taylor suffered a stroke in 2018, but he continued afterward, playing his first US show in 2022 and releasing an album with Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge’s Jazz Is Dead project last year. His music has been sampled on tracks from stars like Usher, the Black Eyed Peas and Kelly Rowland
Below, listen to some of Ebo Taylor's music.
