Under the Bridge of Love

After 54 years in the music business, Ebo Taylor continues to perform wonderful highlife, including on his new album Appia Kwa Bridge, which he will present at Bar du Matin. The Ghanaian singer and guitarist is to highlife what Fela Kuti and Tony Allen are to Afrobeat.Highlife blends Ghanaian traditions with jazzy winds and guitars. The upbeat highlife Ebo Taylor developed also uses keyboards, and its sound is quite close to Afrobeat. “The winds came from the brass bands of the British army. Many Ghanaians learned to play the trumpet or the saxophone and that is how, at the beginning of the last century, our traditional music was influenced by military brass bands and American jazz,” Ebo Taylor says. “That was the beginning of highlife. Everybody wanted to create their own form of highlife, leading to a veritable climax in Ghanaian music and dance.”
After half a century in the business, Taylor still looks to his roots for inspiration. “My father was a musician and took his sons to church to play music. I started playing keyboard when I was 8. My uncles were fishermen – people with little cultural background – but there was traditional music everywhere in our house and it made me want to write music myself. By competing with other groups, we wanted to keep surprising the audience. It is that drive to fame that led to the modernisation of highlife.”
James Brown was an important source of inspiration for highlife, just like for Afrobeat. “Everyone started playing James Brown, the influences of American soul and funk continued to flow in and it resulted in new genres like Afrobeat, Afrofunk, and Afrojazz. My records always had straight highlife on the A-side and Afrofunk on the B-side. Those recordings were later discovered by music collectors in Europe and America, who helped me to become what I am today. A musician who travels the world with his music and has the opportunity to record in good studios.”

(© Jane Hahn)

Ebo Taylor’s new album, Appia Kwa Bridge, was recorded in Berlin with the Afrobeat Academy, the band with which he recorded part of his last album Love and Death (2010) and went on world tour. “I wanted to go back to my roots. The album has several traditional songs by the Fante, a small ethnic group from Ghana’s coastal region. It doesn’t have much highfunk (Afrobeat), but is pure highlife, like the songs ‘Nsu Na Kwan’, ‘Yaa Amponsah’, and ‘Barrima’. That music is played upbeat in Ghana, but I have slowed it down slightly and orchestrated the sound. ‘Barrima’ was written while I was mourning the death of my first wife. Just an acoustic guitar and a voice.”
The title Appia Kwa Bridge refers to a bridge in Taylor’s native town of Saltpond. “It is a small bridge that connects the two parts of the town. In the daytime, it looks like an insignificant little bridge, but at night it is crowded with people. It is called the bridge of love because it is where couples go to meet,” Taylor says. “There are three important clubs nearby, and it happens quite often that couples take a ‘little walk’ under the bridge at night.” [laughs]

Ebo Taylor & the Afrobeat Academy
17/5, 21.00, gratis/gratuit/free
BAR DU MATIN, chaussée d’Alsembergsesteenweg 172, Vorst/Forest, 02-537.71.59, bardumatin.blogspot.com