Ebo, reading through the biographies I could find on your person, there was only talk about your musical career. Has there ever been anything else for you than music?
Ebo Taylor:
"No, I've been playing music all my life. I don't think I would be good at any other profession either; I was born to do this and it's the only thing I want to continue doing."

Do you remember the moment when you knew music would dominate the rest of your life?
Ebo Taylor:
"There was no real moment or decision as such; a series of events and circumstances just prevailed. I started playing the guitar when I was still in high school and a band (Havana Dance Band, red.) asked me to go on tour with them. When I got back, term had already begun, so I decided to quit school and focus on my career as a musician. I've never regretted that decision."

You're known as one of the highlife greats. I think we can even safely say that you're one of the people who helped shaping the genre, so you're perhaps the best person to ask what highlife is and how it evolved.
Ebo Taylor:
"Highlife originated when sailors from Sierra Leone came to Ghana and Creole or Dagoma highlife developed. The principle instrument used for that type of early highlife was the guitar. In the upper-class ballrooms of Ghana the orchestras were still playing western styles like waltz, tango, quickstep and foxtrot, but E.T. Mensah (Emmanuel Tettey Mensah, 1919 - 1996, best known as E. T. Mensah, was a Ghanaian highlife musician. He began as a flutist with the Accra Orchestra, a school children band, in 1930. In 1948 he formed The Tempos and toured West Africa. The group gained international attention, and in 1956 Mensah performed with Louis Armstrong. The popularity of the highlife style declined in the 1960s, but Mensah remained active for years afterwards, red.), a renowned trumpeter, introduced this new Creole music style. It quickly caught on and was called highlife just because it got its popularity in these ballrooms where the "highlife" jet set used to gather. Highlife was highly influenced by jazz, but also carries influences from military march music and even church music; some highlife songs almost sound like church hymns. Through the years, highlife has developed a lot, though, and it has been fused with styles like reggae, soukous, funk and most recently of course hip hop, which created the now highly popular hiplife." 

As a highlife veteran, what's your take on that hiplife scene, now dominating young Ghana?
Ebo Taylor:
"I can't say I dislike it, it's very invigorating music, and besides, I can't really condemn it as I also fused highlife with various other music styles when I was younger, but personally, I would like to see highlife take another direction, away from fusion. This way, the music could develop from its grassroots, which are native music styles like Adowa (Adowa is a dance of the Ashanti people of Ghana, especially noted for the grace and complexity of the dancers' movements. The drumming is also noted for the complexity of the interlocking rhythms and the two atumpan drums which are used as the lead or master drum. Originally funeral dance music, Adowa is now also performed at annual festivals and social gatherings, red.) or Asafo. That is exactly what I'm trying to do with Bonze Konkoma. With them I'm exploring the musical history of the Fante Akan."

Can you tell us where name of the band, Bonze Konkoma, came from?
Ebo Taylor:
"Konkoma is what we in Ghana call the form of highlife that developed from these traditional music styles I was just talking about. The different drums we use are very important in the creation of that sound. The konkon, a small drum that gave its name to that style of highlife, is used to improvise on the rhythm and was named this way because of the similar sound it produces. The konkoma music used to be very popular in the coastal areas of Ghana, but also other parts of West Africa. We've just recorded a new album in Frankfurt, which should be released later this year."

Saying Ebo Taylor is not only saying highlife, but also afrobeat, as you demonstrated recently with the 'Life And Death' album on Strut Records. Afrobeat of course equals Fela Kuti, someone you studied with for some time back in the London of the swinging sixties.
Ebo Taylor:
"Yes, after we met, we discussed the creation of a new form of music, which was to be an evolutionary form of highlife. Highlife is mostly played in a major key, but a lot of our ancestral music is set in a minor key. These days, people call it afrobeat, but it was really a new way of playing highlife. The rhythm of the two genres is very similar. In the seventies, a lot of Ghanaian bands started to record what we called funky highlife, but there was no real difference with Nigerian afrobeat. My own interpretation of afrobeat is deeply rooted in jazz; you can clearly hear that in a track like ‘Love And Death' for example."

'Love And Death' is a song you originally recorded back in the seventies, but which you now re-recorded for the album of the same name.
Ebo Taylor:
"Yeah, that song has a special meaning to me, because I wrote it when my first wife left me. That situation left me distraught and made me realise love and death are really closely related."

Another song on the album is called 'Kwame', a tribute to the late first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah (Kwame Nkrumah, 21 September 1909 - 27 April 1972, was the leader of Ghana and its predecessor state, the Gold Coast, from 1952 to 1966. He was the first President of Ghana and the first Prime Minister of Ghana. An influential 20th century advocate of Pan-Africanism, he was also a founding member of the Organization of African Unity, red.).
Ebo Taylor:
"Kwame Nkrumah has been very important to my musical career, because he is responsible for my musical education, as he was the one who made it financially possible for me to go to London. Of course, I was not the only one who benefited from Nkrumah's cultural policy; artists like Teddy Osei and Sol Amarfio (In Ghana in the 1950s, saxophonist Teddy Osei and drummer Sol Amarfio played in a highlife band called The Stargazers. They left to form The Comets, with Osei's brother Mac Tontoh on trumpet, and scored a hit in West Africa with their 1958 song 'Pete Pete'. In 1962 Osei moved to London to study music on a scholarship from the Ghanaian government. In 1964 he formed Cat's Paw, an early "world music" band that combined highlife, rock and soul and in 1969 he persuaded Amarfio and Tontoh to join him in London, and Osibisa was born. Joining them in the first incarnation were Grenadian Spartacus R on bass; Trinidadian Robert Bailey on keyboard; Antiguan Wendell Richardson on lead guitar and Nigerian Lasisi Amao on percussion and tenor saxophone. Their music is a fusion of African, Caribbean, jazz, rock, Latin and R&B, red.) started out the same way, for example. Nkrumah has done a lot for the arts. I treasure his name and 'Kwame' is always the first song I play when I'm on stage."

You're 75 years old now, but you're still teaching at the University of Accra...
Ebo Taylor:
"Well, at the moment I've given up on teaching because my busy touring and recording schedule just doesn't leave me enough time. It's important we help the future generations develop our musical heritage further. I taught music for about ten years and I hope I can still resume it at one stage."