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Ebo Taylor
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Highlife Champion


Highlife Champion

Looking for highlife in Ghana, Eglantine Chabasseur’s nocturnal travels through the neighbourhood bars and night-clubs of Accra came up empty. Today it’s hip-life, the mix of hip hop and vintage highlife, that rocks the city. It was on a Sunday morning in Saltpond, a little town on the coast, that she finally tracked it down, thanks to Ebo Taylor.

 

When you don’t know your way around Accra, you always seem to end up at “The Circle”, the huge roundabout which is the central point for all the taxis and tro-tro (city buses). The buzz and rumble of Kwame Nkrumah Avenue starts here, with its eclectic soundtrack of prayers and pop songs blaring from loud-speakers on the street. The most popular music in the city right now is hip-life, the mix between hip hop and 1950s highlife. Back then, highlife was the first urban style to produce pan-African superstars and was also the sound of the first independent country in Africa (Ghana gained independence in 1957). In the 1950s it was all the rage, but in 2010 where could highlife be hiding in this gigantic capital of 2 million people?

 

To find out, I was advised to contact Professor John Collins, the well-known champion of highlife. Born in Ghana to a British mother, he was raised in Accra and has Ghanaian nationality. Collins has been involved with highlife since the 70s, with his group Bokoor, and then with his studio, where a whole generation of artists has recorded. These days he happily receives visitors at BAPMAF, the resource centre and NGO which operates as a “Highlife Institute” in the outskirts of Accra. On the walls are posters for shows, and LP covers showing Ebo Taylor, Bob Pinodo and The Uhuru Dance Band, the stars of a golden age of Ghanaian music. The centre holds archives of recordings and promotes research on popular African music, and Collins himself is a great source of information on the history of highlife: “Everything comes from the influence of the horns and the guitar, which came to Ghana in 1900”, he explains. “The Fanti people invented a style called Osibisa Ba, and later the music travelled from the coasts into the interior of the country, into the villages, and became known as palmwine music, because it was played in palmwine bars. In Accra during the 20s and 30s, the Ghanaian elite were playing foxtrot, tangos, ragtime and they adapted the Osibisa Ba street songs to big band formats.” But ordinary people couldn’t get into these clubs reserved for the rich, so they created their own style of street music re-arranged for bands, which they called “high class music” – highlife was born.

 

Thanks to the construction of a vinyl pressing factory in Kumasi, in central Ghana, highlife spread throughout West Africa and became a cultural symbol of Ghana. Since the 1970s, highlife has mixed with folk, funk, hip hop and electronic dance music. Today it’s difficult to find highlife played live, except on Sunday mornings. “The churches are the only place where you can find instruments in good condition”, says Collins. So it was on a Sunday morning that we arrived in Saltpond, a little coastal town to the west of Accra. The guitarist Ebo Taylor, a celebrated highlife veteran, welcomes us in his home. Now, aged 74, he has two new projects on the go. Firstly, on his album Abenkwan Putchaa, which was released in Ghana in 2009, he decided to “Africanize” highlife, which he feels has been too shaped by Anglo-Saxon structures. “I’m fighting for a second musical independence…” he smiles. He draws on traditional Fanti music to reinvent a highlife which is rhythmically and thematically “more Ghanaian”. With his 2010 international release Love and Death Taylor blends highlife with the afro-beat of neighbouring Nigeria, a pan-African sonic manifesto celebrating popular urban music. Ebo Taylor is clearly a man on a mission: “Highlife is not dead and it has not finished evolving!”

 


Ebo Taylor – Love and Death is out now on Strut

 

The Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation, Accra, Ghana
www.bapmaf.com

 

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>> See the report: Highlife Champion


Eglantine Chabasseur




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