Jazz Is Dead: Ebo Taylor & Pat Thomas

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Ghanaian guitarist, composer, arranger, bandleader, and producer Ebo Taylor has been a vital presence in African music for more than half a century. During the early 1960s, he was active in the influential highlife bands the Stargazers and the Broadway Dance Band whose singles were mainstays on national radio. In 1962, he took his Black Star Highlife Band to London and collaborated with other African musicians who were also in Britain at the time, including Fela Kuti. Back in Ghana, he worked as an influential producer, crafting recordings for Pat Thomas (his future collaborator) and C.K. Mann, among many others. During the 70s, his own musical projects combined traditional Ghanaian music with Afro-beat, jazz, and funk, creating a trademark sound.

Pat Thomas is a Ghanaian vocalist and songwriter famed for his work in the highlife bands of Ebo Taylor and his own recordings of Afrobeat and Afro-pop. Born in Agona, in the Ashanti region, Thomas had music almost literally in his DNA, his father was a music theory instructor and his mother a bandleader. In the 1970s, he moved to Accra to join Ebo Taylor’s legendary highlife band The Blue Monks; their residency at the Tip Toe Night Club is an important part of modern Ghanaian cultural history. In the later years, he moved to the Ivory Coast and produced various records in Afro-beat, Afro-Latin sounds, and reggae melded to funky African disco

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