Ghanaian guitarist, arranger, singer-songwriter and cult hero who rose to fame outside Africa only late in life
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.”
