Ebo Taylor was a big enough deal in Ghana in the 1950s. He was part of the highlife scene, which you can think of as the urban cool thing to play, and by cool I mean the thing that people from out of town and often country, with money to spend, wanted to hear. It was a regional version of mid-tempo dance music and crooning. It's easy to tap a foot to and harmonically simple enough to - you just get it immediately.

Ebo was a guitarist and arranger in that era. Something about the music just clicked with him and he made a career out of it. But something also clicked inside of him that there was more, so when the opportunity to go to London to study music came up, he took it.

Before we jump to London, here's an example (that was also on last month's playlist) of that vibe. This is "Maye Omama" and I can only imagine was a killer in the dancehall. This is recorded later, in the '70s, but carries a throwback energy to that earlier dancehall highlife era.

Circa 1962ish, Ebo ends up at the Eric Gilder School. Fellow African Fela Kuti is over at Trinity. It’s kind of mind-boggling they’re there at the same time, but also it kinda makes perfect sense. They cross paths in various night clubs and jam sessions. Nigeria and Ghana were already worlds apart, but when you're a continent away and you meet somebody kinda sorta like you, especially when you can both talk American jazz, you hit it off.

The two became friends and because of the times, got to experience the new American exports to Europe at about the same time. I can't even imagine what James Brown and that whole nature of funk felt like to them. It was taking enough input from jazz, but imposing it over soul and gospel in a way that expanded the rule book. A ragged sounding melody that drifted out of bounds periodically, or a disharmonic chord that painted other colors into a song - imagine that in and out of a dance groove.

They did. We know that. Because Fela took it back to Nigeria and Ebo took it back to Ghana, with new takes on regional variations of highlife.

It starts like this. Listen to "Heaven" and pay extra note to the arrangement here. There's distinct jazz flavor, over some localized funk, and you can feel the merge starting, as the highlife gets updated to Ebo's version of Afrobeat.

Ebo, on his return in the mid-60s, keeps pushing into a sonic and rhythmic space that must have felt in Ghana like James Brown felt in London. It was the sound of old rules breaking and new eras rushing in. The playing for settlers and colonialists as well as some locals was being rejected and the complexity of the new music reflected the complexity of the situation.

By 1980 - there's a reason this is called "Conflict Nkru!" and this is ALL local sounds and energy now. Extra emphasis on conflict. It's come a long way from the 1950s sounds and there's a raw, punk-ness to it all. The accents on the vocals too, knowing they're reaching back out to the people who used to come in, it's just so good.

Ebo’s music is still a recent discovery for me so I'm busy learning more and going through the entire catalogue, or at least as much as I can gather in different places online.

If you're reading this and have favorite tracks or albums, OR other African artists with similar trajectories, please send them my way!