Ebo Tylor’s West African Roots

Image courtsey of CNN

By Naliaka Kitui

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Born in 1936, Taylor grew up listening to the highlife music that has always been at the heart of his style, which fuses jazz elements with traditional highlife for a groovier sound. “I was inspired by the pioneering saxophonist and trumpeter E.T. Mensah and his band The Tempos,” he said.

After leaving college Taylor joined the Stargazers, a highlife band led by saxophonist Teddy Osei and drummer Sol Amarfio (who would both go on to form the legendary British-based Afro rock band, Osibisa)

In the year 1962, Taylor moved to Eric Gilder School of Music in London with the help of the government cultural program founded by Ghana’s first prime minister and president Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, who led Ghana to independence from British rule. London is where Taylor first met and collaborated with Nigerian saxophonist Peter King and Afrobeat legend Kuti.

“Fela used to come to my apartment in Willesden quite often and we’d spend hours playing records,” Taylor said. “When he came to Ghana in ’67, he drove to Cape Coast to see me and we spent the afternoon talking about African Unity.”

Taylor credits Kuti with pushing him, and others, to compose distinctly African music. “He (Fela) never understood why as Africans we like playing jazz; he wanted us to be ourselves, be original and tell our stories,” Taylor said.

In 1965, He moved back to Ghana and became the in-house guitarist, arranger and producer for the Ghanaian record label Essiebons, founded by music producer Dick Essilfie-Bondzie. This is the time where Tylor recorded over 10 albums

Taylor made Essiebons one of the preferred recording studios for musicians from all over West Africa. Sadly, Ghana’s unrestrained political and economic environment throughout the 1970s and ’80s, marked by multiple coups and government reorganizations following the ousting of Nkrumah, muted the development of its music industry and arguably Taylor’s rise to global stardom.