.png)
4 hours ago
7
Ebo Taylor, who has died aged 90, was one of the great innovators of west African music, a Ghanaian guitarist, arranger and singer-songwriter who never received the fame he deserved outside Africa until late in life, by when he had become a much-sampled cult hero. It was only in 2010, when he was 74, that he released Love and Death, his first solo album to be given an international distribution.
Recorded with members of the Berlin-based Afrobeat academy, it included new versions of songs from earlier in his career that until now had been heard only on imports or compilations. And it showed how – like his far more celebrated Nigerian friend Fela Kuti – he had fused African and western styles to create a style of his own.
Playing at Rich Mix in London four years later, he gave a rousing reminder of why he had been rightly treated as a star back home in Ghana for six decades. His starting point was Ghana’s best-known musical style, highlife, but this was now mixed with echoes of Fela’s Afrobeat, along with funk and jazz. Wearing a black hat and a colourful suit, and backed by a seven-piece band with two brass players, he switched from praise songs to Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, to Afrobeat, jazz-influenced guitar solos, and the remarkable title track of his 2010 album. Managing to blend highlife and Shakespeare, he intoned: “Brothers and sisters, lend me your ears, listen to my story of love and death … on our wedding day she gave me a kiss, it was the kiss of death.”
From this dramatic opening he eased off into a jazz-funk workout and then lyrics sung in Ghanaian Fante. Later in the set he provided a solo treatment of an old Ghanaian song from the era of palm wine music, Yaa Amponsah, and left the stage as his band provided a rap version of one of his best-known songs, Heaven. It was an inspired fusion of the old and new.
Despite his age, Taylor still had the ability to reach new audiences. He toured widely in Europe, his career boosted by another well-received album, Appia Kwa Bridge in 2012, followed by Yen Ara in 2018, along with re-releases of his earlier work.
His final album, Ebo Taylor JID022 (2025), was a collaboration with the Los Angeles-based team of Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad for their label Jazz is Dead. The duo had brought Taylor to the US in 2022. Despite his style having changed owing to a stroke in 2018 – his voice had become more rasping, and he could no longer play the guitar – his performances were well received by American audiences.
Many who had never heard Taylor playing live in his prime were introduced to his music when it was sampled by leading American R&B and hip-hop artists: Usher sampled Heaven for the song She Don’t Know, featuring Ludicris (2010), while Black Eyed Peas sampled Odofo Nyi Akyiri Biara for Ring the Alarm (2018).
Born Delroy Taylor in the city of Cape Coast, in what was then the British colony of Gold Coast, he was the son of Samuel, a schoolteacher and church organist, and Sarah (nee Abraham), a trader and baker.
While at Jubilee basic school he was encouraged by his father to play the piano, but he switched to guitar while at St Augustine’s College. Highlife was the dominant musical style in Ghana after independence in 1957, and Taylor played with the leading highlife bands of the era, the Stargazers and the Broadway Dance Band, and became known for his guitar work, songwriting and brass arrangements.
In 1962 he moved to London “to learn intermediate and advanced forms of harmony” at the Eric Gilder School of Music in Soho, with his fees paid by the new Ghana government. He studied European classical composers, including Dvořák and Mozart, but was increasingly fascinated by jazz. He became friends with Kuti, then studying at Trinity College of Music, and they spent hours at Taylor’s flat in Willesden listening to jazz and analysing its structure. Discussions with Kuti led Taylor to start mixing highlife with jazz and funk, a fusion he explored with the London-based Black Star Highlife Band. The band included other Ghanaian music students, including his fellow former Stargazers Teddy Osei and Sol Amarfio – later to find success with Osibisa.
After returning to Ghana in 1965, Taylor put his new musical knowledge and ideas into practice. As a band-leader, arranger and producer he worked with several bands, including Uhuru Yenzu, the Apagya Show Band, and the Pelikans, and became a central figure at Essiebons Records, working with musicians including the singer-songwriter Pat Thomas and guitarist CK Mann.
Among his solo albums was Ebo Taylor (1977), which included the original version of Heaven, and Twer Nyame (1978). The original version of Love and Death appeared on Conflict Nkrui!, recorded with Uhuru Yenzu in 1980.
By 2001 he was concentrating on teaching highlife and jazz guitar at the University of Ghana. But with the growing popularity of African styles in the world music era he began to develop a cult following in the west, helped by the inclusion of his Heaven on the Soundway compilation Ghana Soundz (2002).
Affectionately know as Uncle Ebo, Taylor settled in Saltpond, near Cape Coast. He collaborated with several of his children. In 2009 he formed the Bonze Konkoma Band, which included three of his sons, Ebo Jr, Henry and William. Henry and another son, Delroy, later played with him in the Saltpond City Band, and in his final years he played with Henry, William and Delroy in his Family Band.
Ebo Jr died in 2022. Taylor is survived by his wife, Elina (nee Okwan), whom he married in 1973, and by 15 children.
