Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Eric Sunu Doe, Senior lecturer, University of Ghana
The news of the passing of Ghanaian highlife star Ebo Taylor on 7 February 2026 felt less like the loss of a public musical figure and more like the closing of a living chapter of Ghanaian musical knowledge. To many, he was a legendary guitarist, composer, arranger, and ambassador of Ghanaian highlife music.
Highlife music is a homegrown Ghanaian popular dance-music, believed to have emerged along the west African coast in the late 19th century. It fuses indigenous musical elements with those of the west. Several styles that characterise it include brass and regimental influenced adaha and its konkoma variants, guitar influence and the “swing” dance bands which were popular with the then emerging local elite. These styles have become the bedrock of today’s popular musical styles.
Ebo Taylor was a custodian of Ghanaian popular musical thought, of ensemble ethics (playing music in a group), and of what it meant to live inside music as a craft and community. His mentorship shaped my musical life as an ethnomusicologist and as a musician in the palmwine genre.
I first encountered him as part of the pioneering guitar class at the University of Ghana in the early 2000s. For the next few years he shaped how I played guitar, how I listened, how I arranged, and how I understood the responsibilities of being in a band. Much of what I do today in my highlife ensemble traces directly back to those encounters.
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Who was Ebo Taylor?
Deroy Ebo Taylor’s life in music was inevitable and self-fashioned. He was born on 7 January 1936 in the city of Cape Coast in southern Ghana into a musical environment shaped by church and community music-making. His formal education revolved around music as practice, as his father was a known choirmaster and church organist.
By his late teens in Cape Coast, he was already involved in the dance band culture that would become the backbone of modern Ghanaian popular music. This was the time when “swing” dance band highlife was popular with many Ghanaians. Bands like the Stargazers Dance Band, the Broadway Dance Band and Tempos Dance Band would provide the sounds that shaped Ghana’s fight for independence. These sounds deepened his resolve to be a musician. He often told stories of how he would break school rules to watch or, later, perform with some of the local bands in Cape Coast.
His early music was shaped by the formal instruction he received from his father and his music teacher at secondary school (St Augustine’s College), as well as his peers and eventually the various bands he played in.
Taylor later deepened his theoretical and arranging knowledge through formal studies in London at the Eric Gilder School of Music in the early 1960s. That period placed him within a broader Black Atlantic musical conversation. It connected him to Ghanaian musicians who would later shape African popular music globally. These included saxophonist Teddy Osei and drummer Sol Amarfio, who were members of what would become the globally remowned Osibisa, and contemporaries like Nigerian music star and activist Fela Kuti, who were similarly navigating jazz, highlife and emerging African popular forms.
Highlife pioneer
When he returned to Ghana, he worked with bands, recording studios, and particularly the pioneering Ghanaian label Essiebons Records. It was with Essiebons that his creative genius became widely recognised by Ghanaians, as he contributed in shaping the sound that has become known as highlife from the 1970s. He worked with great Ghanaian musicians like Pat Thomas, C.K. Mann and Gyedu-Blay Ambolley.
His fingerprint could be heard on the songs he worked on, especially in his trademark guitar phrasing and tone, and in his horn arrangements. These included My Love and Music, Love and Death and Atwer Abroba. Some of these songs have been introduced to contemporary global audiences by being sampled by artists including the Black Eyed Peas, Jidenna, Kelly Rowland and Vic Mensa.
Scholars of highlife, including John Collins and Mark Millas Fish, have emphasised the centrality of arranger-bandleaders such as Taylor in shaping modern Ghanaian dance band music. His compositional practice, as I observed it, was quite casual with a deeper sense of reflection.
Taylor’s achievements were honoured domestically and globally. In 2014 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Reflections of a mentee
For those of us who had the privilege of being his students, his greatest legacy was how he imparted knowledge to us. In his classes, he embraced us as the next generation of musicians who would be responsible for carrying the highlife tradition forward. He gave us an understanding of palmwine guitar, how to play the intricate rhythms with relative ease, and how to leave spaces for the voice to tell the stories that were meant to be told.
Today, I model my ensemble pedagogy around some of these ideals Ebo Taylor instilled in us and, as much as possible, I collaborate with professional musicians who come in to engage with my students when their time permits.
His passing marks the closing of yet another library. But we will continue to hear his voice in the numerous songs he shared with us and in those of us who are building on the knowledge he passed down.
Eric Sunu Doe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
– ref. Ebo Taylor took highlife to the world and changed Ghanaian music forever – https://theconversation.com/ebo-taylor-took-highlife-to-the-world-and-changed-ghanaian-music-forever-276406