Love and Death

This is the first ever internationally released studio album from Ebo Taylor, now 74 and one of the legends of the second golden age of Ghanaian music, the guitar highlife paradise of the 1970s. He was an in-house producer and arranger for labels like Essiebon in that heyday, as well as playing with stars such as Pat Thomas with his band the Blue Monks. But the Ebo Taylor flavour is currently enjoying a new lease of life: some of the cream of the tracks from his own releases of some 30 years ago have recently graced Ghanaian compilations from labels like Analog Africa and Soundway [see feature on p42] – not to mention a sample from his tune ‘Heaven’ turning up on the recent Usher and Ludacris hit ‘She Don’t Know.’ So the ever resourceful and visionary Strut Records have put the septuagenarian guitarist, keyboard player and composer together with some of the musicians who have powered their Inspiration Information series and the Berlin based Afro-beat Academy, as well as with members of Pat Thomas’ 70s band Marijata.

This is a real slow burner of an album, not a dancefloor smash by any means, but one which repays frequent listenings as it brings together reworkings of his classic tunes like ‘Victory’ and the beautiful highlife roots and Afro-beat of ‘Love And Death’ with new compositions like the jazzy ‘Obra’ or the solid grooving ‘Mizin’. The arrangements are intricate, the sound of the horns is sensuously fat and, against all the odds, he sounds like a man with a band who is going somewhere.