Ebo Taylor, Ghanaian highlife pioneer and guitarist, dies at 90 Music

Ghanaian musician Ebo Taylor, the defining force behind the genre of high-end music, has died at the age of 90.

His son Kweku Taylor announced the news on Sunday: “The world has lost a giant. A giant of African music. Ebo Taylor passed away yesterday; a day after launching the Ebo Taylor Music Festival and exactly a month after his 90th birthday, leaving behind an unparalleled artistic legacy. Dad, your light will never dim.”

A spokesman for the Ghanaian president told the BBC’s Newsday program that Taylor “will be remembered as one of our greatest ever musicians… a man who strove to put Ghanaian music on the global map at a time when other genres of music were prominent.”

The music website Passion of the Weiss recently praised Taylor as “the greatest rhythm guitarist in history… With complete authenticity, he has incorporated the diverse rhythmic traditions of the Ga, Ewe, Dagomba and his own Akan people into his compositions.”

Taylor Deroy Taylor was born in Cape Coast, Ghana on January 6, 1936. He began playing the piano at the age of six, and his tastes in American and English music were shaped, partly due to Ghana being a British colony at the time.

Growing up during the highlife boom, he turned to the guitar while in college, and subsequently joined the Stargazers – whose members Teddy Osei and Sol Amarfio would later form the UK-based Afro-rock band Osibisa – and a series of other bands. He has become known for his rare embrace of both highlife – which is largely played in the major mode – and Afrobeat, which sticks to the minor modes.

At the Eric Gelder School of Music in London in the early 1960s, Taylor studied Dvořák and cited the complexity of the Czech composer’s music as an influence on his own. But he also said he learned more outside the classroom, by sitting in with bands, attending jazz and high-life concerts, and meeting bands including the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

At the time, Nigerian musician Fela Kuti was studying at Trinity College in the capital. The pair became friends, bonded over a common interest in high life and often jammed together. “We also had the desire to be Miles Davis, or Charlie Christian, or Kenny Burrell,” Taylor told Post Genre in 2025. “So we had the same temperament… He was a fun, energetic person.”

The two musicians became innovators of the genre. In 2014, Taylor told the BBC that “with the advent of James Brown and funk music, there was an opportunity to develop highlife music. Fela had put a lot of work into introducing funk into Yoruba music, while doing almost the same in Ghana.”

Taylor credited Kuti with encouraging him to write distinctively African music, combining the influence of Dvošak and Davis with a strong sense of his own musical traditions, both from Ghana and his Malian grandmother. “I think it’s important for music to progress, otherwise it just becomes something for museums,” he told Vinyl Factory in 2018, “but you have to know your traditional culture before you start adding things to it.”

After forming the Black Star Highlife band in London in 1964, he returned to his homeland a year later, forming bands including the New Broadway Dance Band and The Blue Monks, both of which included, for a time, fellow Ghanaian musician Pat Thomas – now a member of Ahmed. [Ahmed].

In the early 1970s, Taylor worked as guitarist, arranger and in-house producer for Essiebons, run by Dick Isilvi Bondzi, a former civil servant turned music impresario who released what his 2021 reissue called “the best of modern highlife.” Taylor recorded several of his own albums for the label and worked on recordings for artists such as Thomas and Guido Play Ampoli.

In the 1980s, Taylor stepped back from leading his own bands to work on recordings by other artists. In the 2000s, he taught music at the University of Ghana.

His international debut album, Love and Death, was released in 2010. Taylor’s music has become more widely known thanks to growing international interest in high life, which has been the subject of numerous recordings and reissues. His songs have also been sampled by artists including Usher, Black Eyed Peas, Kelly Rowland, Jidenna, and Vic Mensa. Love and Death led to Taylor’s renewed activism, which included the albums Appia Kwa Bridge (2012) and Yen Ara (2018), and international tours.

In 2018, Taylor suffered a stroke that weakened his ability to speak English. For the 2025 Ebo Taylor album JID022, a collaboration with Ali Shahid Muhammad and Adrian Young’s Jazz Is Dead project, his son Henry facilitated communication between the three musicians – and played guitar on the project himself. Taylor often played with his son, Roy. It is unclear how many children Taylor has had. His eldest son, Ebo Taylor Jr., died in 2022.

At the age of 90, Taylor could no longer play the guitar. He lived most of his life, including his final years, in the small coastal town of Saltpond, where he was known locally as Uncle Ebo. He has received numerous lifetime achievement awards from organizations representing Ghanaian music and top music.

Contemporary singer and rapper Black Sheriff paid tribute to Taylor, saying, “We have lost a legend whose contribution to music resonated globally. I take solace in the fact that I witnessed greatness in Uncle Ebo Taylor’s art form. Rest in Power!”