On a recent call with The New York Times, from his home in Saltpond, Ghana, Ebo Taylor, 90 years old next year, struggled to answer questions put to him, relying on his son Henry to do the talking. Taylor suffered a stroke in 2018 that stole much of his ability to communicate in English, and he no longer plays the guitar. It’s natural to consider these obstacles and wonder just how much input the highlife legend had on the new album Ebo Taylor JID022, the latest installment in Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad’s Jazz Is Dead series. Have no fear: Once his voice begins bellowing over the band’s raw, smoky Afro-funk rhythms, it’s clear that the crucial driver of the music is Taylor himself.
Deroy “Ebo” Taylor’s stature is undisputed. Already a grown man when Ghana gained independence from Great Britain in 1957, he forged his legacy across decades of turbulence, upheaval, and revolution. Taylor’s friendship with Fela Kuti epitomized Ghanaian-Nigerian musical exchange even as tensions between their two nations tore apart the region, with Fela pushing his collaborator to eschew foreign influence for music of African heritage. Though recorded in Younge’s Linear Labs studio in Los Angeles and bearing its Jazz Is Dead catalog number in its title—a convention that makes the label’s releases seem more like franchise entries than potential classic records in their own right—Ebo Taylor JID022 nonetheless succeeds in feeling like a true Ebo Taylor album. Brief at seven songs, only one of which sneaks past the five-minute mark, this is a potent dose of the scintillating Ghanaian highlife sounds he has spent his long career creating.
The album comes to life with the palpitating organ line of “Get Up,” signaling for the band—a blend of Ghanaian and American players, including Younge and Muhammad—to build a thick, lush suite; trumpets and trombones hit you from one side, flutes from the other. “Obra Akyedzi” features a rhythmic rush of percussion, waka-waka electric guitars, and freewheeling brass. It all clicks together marvellously, opening a portal that sees clear through to the shores of 1970s Accra.
At the center of the hurricane is Taylor, mostly singing in his native Akan. It’s reported that the elder Taylor was reliant on his son, a respected player in his own right who performs Fender Rhodes on every song, to interact with producers during sessions. (“Most of my talking in the studio was with Henry,” Younge said.) Nevertheless, Ebo is credited with writing all the lyrics and vocal melodies, and his performance often feels impromptu when compared to the well-drilled musicians, as though summoned from someplace deep within.
Taylor’s voice is deeper and more guttural than it once was, yet still capable of immense power—his crooning on the snaking, spiritual “Nsa a W’oanye Edwuma, Ondzidzi” is remarkably resolute. There’s true showmanship to the way he elongates the notes on the peppy “Obi Do Woa (If Someone Loves You),” his voice inspiring chanted backing vocals and punctuated by tidy drum rolls. In such moments, there is no mistaking that Taylor is the one leading the band and not the other way around; nor is there any denying Younge and Muhammad’s reverence for his sound, era, and heritage. It all amalgamates into a fine late-career achievement for the master bandleader.
