Legendary guitarist, composer performed pivotal position in shaping trendy standard music in West Africa
ACCRA, GHANA:
Tributes have been pouring in from throughout Ghana and the world because the dying of Ghanaian highlife legend Ebo Taylor.
A guitarist, composer and bandleader who died on Saturday, Taylor’s six-decade profession performed a key position in shaping trendy standard music in West Africa.
Usually described as one of many founding fathers of up to date highlife, Taylor died a day after the launch of a music pageant bearing his title within the capital, Accra, and only a month after celebrating his ninetieth birthday.
Highlife, a style mixing conventional African rhythms with jazz and Caribbean influences, was just lately added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage record.
“The world has misplaced an enormous. A colossus of African music,” an announcement shared on his official web page mentioned. “Your mild won’t ever fade.”
The Los Angeles-based collective Jazz Is Useless referred to as him a pioneer of highlife and Afrobeat, whereas Ghanaian dancehall star Stonebwoy and American producer Adrian Younge, who has labored with Jay Z and Kendrick Lamar, additionally paid tribute to his legacy.
Nigerian author and poet Dami Ajayi described him as a “highlife maestro” and a “unbelievable guitarist”.
– ‘Uncle Ebo’ –
Taylor’s affect prolonged far past Ghana, with parts of his music showing within the soul, jazz, hip-hop and Afrobeat genres that dominate the African and world charts at present.
Born Deroy Taylor in Cape Coast in 1936, he started performing within the Fifties, as highlife was establishing itself because the dominant sound in Ghana within the years following independence.
Recognized for intricate guitar traces and wealthy horn preparations, he performed with main bands together with the Stargazers and the Broadway Dance Band.
Within the early Nineteen Sixties, he travelled to London to review music, the place he labored alongside different African musicians, together with Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti.
The trade of concepts between the 2 would later be seen as formative to the event of Afrobeat, a political cocktail mixing highlife with funk, jazz and soul.
Again in Ghana, Taylor grew to become one of many nation’s most sought-after arrangers and producers, working with stars equivalent to Pat Thomas and CK Mann whereas main his personal bands.
His compositions — together with “Love & Demise”, “Heaven”, “Odofo Nyi Akyiri Biara” and “Appia Kwa Bridge” — gained renewed worldwide consideration many years later as DJs, collectors and file labels reissued his music. His grooves had been sampled by hip-hop and R&B artists and helped introduce new world audiences to Ghanaian highlife.
Taylor continued touring into his 70s and 80s, performing throughout Europe and america as a part of a late-career renaissance that cemented his standing as a cult determine amongst youthful musicians.
