Ebo Taylor | |
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 Ebo Taylor & Band 2017 at Club W71, Weikersheim | |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Deroy Taylor |
| Born | January 6, 1936 Cape Coast, Ghana |
| Origin | Accra, Ghana |
| Genres | |
| Occupation(s) |
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| Years active | Late 1950s–present [1] |
| Labels |
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Ebo Taylor (born 1936) is a Ghanaian guitarist, composer, bandleader, record producer and arranger focusing on highlife and afrobeat music.
Ebo Taylor has been a pivotal figure on the Ghanaian music scene for over six decades. In the late 1950s he was active in the influential highlife bands the Stargazers and the Broadway Dance Band. In 1962, Taylor took his group, the Black Star Highlife Band, to London. In London, Taylor collaborated with Nigerian afrobeat star Fela Kuti as well as other African musicians in Britain at the time. [2] [3]
Returning to Ghana, Taylor worked as a producer, crafting recordings for Pat Thomas, C. K. Mann, and others, as well as exploring solo projects, combining traditional Ghanaian material with afrobeat, jazz, and funk rhythms to create his own recognizable sound in the 1970s. He was the inhouse guitar player, arranger, and producer for Essiebons, founded by Dick Essilfie-Bondzie. [4]
Taylor's work became popular internationally with hip-hop producers in the 21st century. [5] In 1992, Ghetto Concept included his afrobeats in their music. In 2008, Ebo Taylor met the Berlin-based musicians of the Afrobeat Academy band, including saxophonist Ben Abarbanel-Wolff, which led to the release of the album Love and Death with Strut Records (his first internationally distributed album). [1] [6] [7] In 2010, Usher used a sample from Taylor's song "Heaven" for "She Don't Know" with Ludacris. [8]
He collaborated with the Afrobeat Academy in Berlin in 2011. In 2017, his Ghanaian funk anthem "Come Along," was popular among DJs. [4]
The success of Love and Death prompted Strut to issue the retrospective Life Stories: Highlife & Afrobeat Classics 1973–1980, in the spring of 2011. A year later, in 2012, a third Strut album, Appia Kwa Bridge, was released. Appia Kwa Bridge showed that at 77 years old, Taylor remained creative, mixing traditional Fante songs and chants with children's rhymes and personal stories into his own sharp vision of highlife. [9]
He performed at the 2015 edition of the annual Stanbic Jazz Festival along with Earl Klugh, Ackah Blay and others. [10]
Life Time Achievement Award - 2014 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards. [11]
Lifetime Achievement Award – 2019 Highlife Music Awards. [12]
Music Legend of the year - 2019 Ghana Business Awards. [13]
Grammy award
The Rough Guide To Psychedelic Africa (World Music Network) 2012
Afrobeat is a Nigerian music genre that involves the combination of West African musical styles from mainly Nigeria such as the traditional Yoruba and Igbo music and highlife with American funk, jazz, and soul influences. With a focus on chanted vocals, complex intersecting rhythms, and percussion. The style was pioneered in the 1960s by Nigerian multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Fela Kuti, who is most known for popularizing the style both within and outside Nigeria. At the height of his popularity, he was referred to as one of Africa's most "challenging and charismatic music performers."
Highlife is a music genre that started in West Africa, along the coastal cities of present-day Ghana in the 19th century, during its history as a colony of the British and through its trade routes in coastal areas. It describes multiple local fusions of African metre and western jazz melodies. It uses the melodic and main rhythmic structures of traditional African music, but is typically played with Western instruments. Highlife is characterized by jazzy horns and guitars which lead the band and its use of the two-finger plucking guitar style that is typical of African music. Recently it has acquired an uptempo, synth-driven sound.
There are many styles of traditional and modern music of Ghana, due to Ghana's worldwide geographic position on the African continent.
Hiplife is a Ghanaian musical style that fuses Ghanaian culture and hip hop. Recorded predominantly in the Ghanaian Akan language, hiplife is rapidly gaining popularity in the 2010s throughout West Africa and abroad, especially in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and Germany.
The music of West Africa has a significant history, and its varied sounds reflect the wide range of influences from the area's regions and historical periods.
Tony Oladipo Allen was a Nigerian and French drummer, composer, and songwriter who lived and worked in Paris, France. Allen was the drummer and musical director of Fela Kuti's band Africa '70 from 1968 to 1979, and was one of the founders of the Afrobeat genre. Fela once stated that "without Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat". He was described by Brian Eno as "perhaps the greatest drummer who has ever lived".
Soul to Soul is a 1971 documentary film about the Independence Day concert held in Accra, Ghana ,on 6 March 1971. It features an array of mostly American R&B, soul, rock, and jazz musicians.
The Souljazz Orchestra is a Canadian musical group based in Ottawa that has toured Canada, the United States and Europe. Their music is a fusion of soul, jazz, funk, Afrobeat and Latin-American styles.
"Psychedelic Woman" is a 1973 Ghanaian song by Honny & the Bees Band. It was written and sung by Ernest Aubrey Honny, who worked mainly as a session keyboardist and recording engineer. Over a medium-tempo groove, the song begins with a spoken-word story concerning a "psychedelic woman" first spotted at a nightclub. The story ends with a transitional climax to a sung chorus of several voices. There are several more choruses, interspersed with solo singing, then a funky, jazzy electric organ solo, finishing with a brief recap of singing. Part and parcel of the afrobeat sound then becoming popular in Ghana, influences include reggae, James Brown, and perhaps even Britain's mods.
Nana Richard Abiona, better known by his stage name Fuse ODG, is a Ghanaian-English singer, songwriter and rapper. He is best known for his singles "Antenna" and "Dangerous Love", and for featuring on Major Lazer's "Light It Up (Remix)".
Soundway Records is a British, London-based independent record label, founded and run by English DJ and music producer Miles Cleret. Since its initial release of a collection of Ghanaian music in 2002, it has released compilation albums of African, Caribbean, Latin, and Asian music from the 1950s to 1980s.
Gyedu-Blay Ambolley is a Ghanaian highlife musician, songwriter, producer, and composer. The first musician from Ghana and the world to formally incorporate rap forms into local highlife rhythms, Ambolley created the musical genre Simigwa.
Maradona Yeboah Adjei ,, also known by his stage names Guru and Gurunkz, is a Ghanaian rapper and fashion designer. Guru NKZ is a hiplife artist in Ghana. He is known for his contemporary hip-hop rap style that combines English and Ghanaian indigenous languages. Guru's breakthrough was in 2011 when his hit song "Lapaz Toyota" appeared on the Ghanaian music charts. Guru is considered a contemporary hip-hop artist, as his songs venture new ground in the Ghanaian music scene, mixing hip-hop, Afrobeats, highlife, and dancehall sounds.
Pat Thomas is a Ghanaian vocalist and songwriter. He is widely known for his work in highlife bands of Ebo Taylor.
Benjamin Paapa Kofi Yankson, known as Paapa Yankson was a Ghanaian highlife singer, songwriter, and producer. He recorded two dozen albums during his career; his hit songs included "Wiase Mu Nsem", "Show Your Love", "Wo Yere Anaa Wo Maame", and "Tena Menkyen". He won multiple awards, including Best Composition for his song "Yaaba" at the 1997 Konkomba Awards. He was a recipient of the Grand Medal of Ghana for his contribution to Ghanaian music.
Nana Yaw Nkrumah born in Accra, professionally known as Dr Ray Beat is a Ghanaian record producer and sound engineer, who produces music ranging from Afrobeat, Hip hop, Hiplife, Azonto, Dancehall and Afropop. He also produced for Guru, Kwaw Kese, Kofi Kinaata and more.
Jewel Ackah was a Ghanaian highlife and gospel musician. He composed the lyrics of "Arise Arise," the party anthem of the centre-left Ghanaian political party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), popularly sung to the tune of the Christian hymn, "Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus". He was dubbed by media pundits as the "Prince of Highlife".
Afrobeats is an umbrella term to describe popular music from West Africa and the diaspora that initially developed in Nigeria, Ghana, and the UK in the 2000s and 2010s. Afrobeats is less of a style per se, and more of a descriptor for the fusion of sounds flowing majorly out of Nigeria. Genres such as hiplife, jùjú music, highlife and naija beats, among others, were amalgamated under the "Afrobeats" umbrella.
Orlando Julius Aremu Olusanya Ekemode, known professionally as Orlando Julius or Orlando Julius Ekemode was a Nigerian saxophonist, singer, bandleader, and songwriter closely associated with afrobeat music.
Mensa Ansah, better known as M3NSA is a British Ghanaian producer, composer, rapper, singer and filmmaker. Known for his recognizable sound and instinctual storytelling, while still being deeply rooted in his motherland, he has grown into an international sensation through the years because of his ability to navigate different languages, cultures, and art expressions.
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