Ghanaian highlife legend Ebo Taylor announces European tour

20 Mar 2024 - 15:07

Published under the Creative Commons Licence

Ghanaian highlife legend Ebo Taylor has announced a series of dates in France, Italy and the UK as part of his spring and summer 2024 tour.

Ebo Taylor.

Dubbed the Carrying the Torch Tour, it follows his recent five-city tour of Australia as well as his showing at the opening ceremony of the ongoing African Games 2023 in Accra where he shared the stage with longtime collaborator Pat Thomas.

On the road, Taylor will be backed by the Ebo Taylor & Family band featuring his sons Henry, Roy X and William, with festivalgoers joining to celebrate Taylor’s inimitable six-decade career.

“There are American influences in my music, but there is an African culture behind it,” he said.

Kicking off in France, Taylor will play the Nuits Sonores Festival in Lyon, Cabaret Sauvage in Paris and Le 106, Rouen. He will then head to FestiValle 2024 in Agrigento, Sicily, in Italy and Hootananny in London before rounding up at the Gilles Peterson-founded We Out Here in Wimborne in the UK.

One of Ghana’s most prolific musicians, Ebo Taylor was an essential figure in the booming ’50s highlife scene, leading two of Ghana’s greatest big bands: Stargazers and Broadway Dance Band. Following that, he moved to London on scholarship from Ghana’s first government, under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah, to study music in 1962 alongside West African luminaries like Fela Kuti and Peter King, later forming the Black Star Highlife Band and incorporating jazz elements into traditional highlife forms.

Returning to Ghana, Taylor worked as the inhouse guitar player, arranger, and producer for Essiebons label, founded by Dick Essilfie-Bondzie, crafting recordings for Pat Thomas, CK Mann, Paapa Yankson and Gyedu-Blay Ambolley among others, as well as exploring solo projects, combining traditional Ghanaian material with Afrobeat, jazz and funk rhythms to create his own distinct style and sound in the 1970s.

In 2008, Taylor met Afrobeat Academy band based in Berlin, Germany, as well as saxophonist Ben Abarbanel-Wolff, which led to the release of his first internationally distributed album Love and Death with Strut Records. He is behind other critically received releases including Appia Kwa Bridge (2012) and Yen Ara (2018).

Ebo Taylor Carrying the Torch Tour