On a current name with The New York Occasions, from his residence in Saltpond, Ghana, Ebo Taylor, 90 years previous subsequent yr, struggled to reply questions put to him, counting on his son Henry to do the speaking. Taylor suffered a stroke in 2018 that stole a lot of his capacity to speak in English, and he not performs the guitar. It’s pure to think about these obstacles and marvel simply how a lot enter the highlife legend had on the brand new album Ebo Taylor JID022, the most recent installment in Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad’s Jazz Is Useless sequence. Haven’t any worry: As soon as his voice begins bellowing over the band’s uncooked, smoky Afro-funk rhythms, it’s clear that the essential driver of the music is Taylor himself.
Deroy “Ebo” Taylor’s stature is undisputed. Already a grown man when Ghana gained independence from Nice Britain in 1957, he cast his legacy throughout many years of turbulence, upheaval, and revolution. Taylor’s friendship with Fela Kuti epitomized Ghanaian-Nigerian musical alternate at the same time as tensions between their two nations tore aside the area, with Fela pushing his collaborator to eschew overseas affect for music of African heritage. Although recorded in Younge’s Linear Labs studio in Los Angeles and bearing its Jazz Is Useless catalog quantity in its title—a conference that makes the label’s releases appear extra like franchise entries than potential basic data in their very own proper—Ebo Taylor JID022 nonetheless succeeds in feeling like a real Ebo Taylor album. Transient at seven songs, solely considered one of which sneaks previous the five-minute mark, this can be a potent dose of the scintillating Ghanaian highlife sounds he has spent his lengthy profession creating.
The album involves life with the palpitating organ line of “Get Up,” signaling for the band—a mix of Ghanaian and American gamers, together with Younge and Muhammad—to construct a thick, lush suite; trumpets and trombones hit you from one facet, flutes from the opposite. “Obra Akyedzi” contains a rhythmic rush of percussion, waka-waka electrical guitars, and freewheeling brass. All of it clicks collectively marvellously, opening a portal that sees clear by means of to the shores of Nineteen Seventies Accra.
On the middle of the hurricane is Taylor, largely singing in his native Akan. It’s reported that the elder Taylor was reliant on his son, a revered participant in his personal proper who performs Fender Rhodes on each tune, to work together with producers throughout classes. (“Most of my speaking within the studio was with Henry,” Younge mentioned.) Nonetheless, Ebo is credited with writing all of the lyrics and vocal melodies, and his efficiency usually feels impromptu when in comparison with the well-drilled musicians, as if summoned from someplace deep inside.