Ebo Taylor ≈ Appia Kwa Bridge (2012)

 Ebo Taylor ≈ Appia Kwa Bridge
Location: Salt Pond, Ghana
Album release: February 28 / March 19,  2012
Record Label: Strut Records
Styles: Afro-beat/Afro-Pop/African Traditions/Ghanaian/Highlife/West African
Duration:    41:21
Tracks:
01. Ayesama      7:04
02. Abonsam      5:31
03. Nsu Na Kwan      4:47
04. Yaa Amponsah      4:26
05. Assom Dwee      5:55
06. Kruman Dey      4:39
07. Appia Kwa Bridge      5:30
08. Barrima      3:27
Credits:
∏ Ben Abarbanel-Wolff  Farfisa Organ, Producer, Sax (Baritone), Sax (Tenor)
∏ Tony Allen  Drums
∏ Marie Clausen  Product Manager, Release Coordinator
∏ Patrick Frankowski  Bass
∏ Christian Grabandt  Trumpet
∏ Jane Hahn  Photography
∏ Kelly Hibbert  Mastering
∏ Ralph Karikari  Bass
∏ Martin Klingenberg  Trumpet
∏ Oghene Kologbo  Bass, Guitar (Bass), Guitar (Tenor)
∏ Friedrich Milz  Trombone
∏ Pax Nicholas  Maracas
∏ Eric Owusu  Bell, Choir/Chorus, Maracas
∏ Ekow Alabi Savage  Choir/Chorus, Drums
∏ Quinton Scott  Product Manager, Release Coordinator
∏ Philip Sindy  Trumpet
∏ Jochen Stroeh  Engineer, Mixing
∏ Ebo Taylor  Choir/Chorus, Composer, Guitar, Primary Artist, Vocals
∏ Henry Taylor  Choir/Chorus, Farfisa Organ, Vocals
∏ Matt Thame  Graphic Design
∏ Eric Trosset  Management
∏ J. Whitefield  Guitar, Guitar (Tenor)
∏ Kwame Yeboah  Farfisa Organ, Wurlitzer
Website: http://www.ebotaylor-loveanddeath.com/
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/ebotaylor#!
Description:
∏ “I wanted to go back to a highlife feeling with this album,” explains Ebo Taylor. “The songs are very personal and it is an important part of my music to keep alive many traditional Fante songs, war chants and children’s rhymes.”
∏ ‘Appia Kwa Bridge’, released this April, is a strident return from the Ghanaian highlife guitar legend. Featuring six new compositions, his sound is more dense and tightly locked than ever with Berlin-based musicians Afrobeat Academy, a rock solid unit since regular touring worldwide following his ‘Love And Death’ album in 2010, including a string of dates for WOMAD. Jochen Stroh works his analogue magic once more from his base at Berlin’s Lovelite Studios.
∏ The album covers a variety of themes dear to Taylor. The title track references a small bridge in Ebo’s hometown of Saltpond on the Cape Coast: “it is a tiny bridge but a place known in the town where people meet, where lovers get together.” The firing, rousing ‘Ayesama’, first demo-ed during the ‘Love And Death’ sessions, is a Fante war cry, a taunt – “what’s your mother’s name?”; ‘Nsu Na Kwan’, based on a Fante proverb, asks “Which is older – the river or the old road” with the sub-text to respect your elders and the brilliant ‘Abonsam’ carries the message that Abonsam (The Devil) is responsible for evil in the world and that we should follow the Christian message.
∏ Elsewhere, the album features a new version of highlife anthem, ‘Yaa Amponsah’, first recorded during the ‘20s by Jacob Sam’s Sam’s Trio before becoming a popular standard in Ghana, and a cover of an original track from Taylor’s time with Apagya Show Band during the ’70s, ‘Serwa Brakatu’, re-titled here as ‘Kruman Dey’. The closer, the acoustic ‘Barrima’, is a poignant tribute to Taylor’s first wife and one true love who sadly passed away during Summer 2011. “Ebo wrote the song following her passing and recorded this in one take during our last day in the studio,” reflects bandleader Ben Abarbanel-Wolff. “He was very emotional.”
∏ The album features a number of special guests within the credits including incomparable drummer Tony Allen, original Africa 70 guitarist Oghene Kologbo and conga maestro Addo Nettey a.k.a. Pax Nicholas. Representing the younger players, keyboard genius Kwame Yeboah, son of Ghanaian legend S.K. Yeboah, makes full use of Lovelite’s famed collection of Farfisa and Wurlitzer organs.
∏ Ebo Taylor’s ‘Appia Kwa Bridge’ is released on Strut as a 1CD, 2LP and digitally.

Personnel:
∏ Ebo Taylor: Choir/Chorus, Composer, Guitar, Primary Artist, Vocals
∏ Ben Abarbanel-Wolff: Farfisa Organ, Producer, Sax (Baritone), Sax (Tenor)
∏ Tony Allen: Drums
∏ Patrick Frankowski: Bass
∏ Christian Grabandt, Martin Klingenberg, Philip Sindy: Trumpet
∏ Ralph Karikari, Oghene Kologbo: Bass
∏ Friedrich Milz: Trombone
∏ Pax Nicholas: Maracas
∏ Eric Owusu: Bell, Choir/Chorus, Maracas
∏ Ekow Alabi Savage Choir/Chorus, Drums
∏ Henry Taylor: Choir/Chorus, Farfisa Organ, Vocals
∏ J. Whitefield: Guitar
∏ Kwame Yeboah: Farfisa Organ, Wurlitzer
Review by Rick Anderson
∏ Unlike pop songs based on the Europe-derived rules of tonal music, Afro-beat doesn't typically move in a deliberate way from one place to another and then home again in a reasonably prescribed pattern of tension and release. Instead, it generally stays in a single place and dances there until it gets tired -- which can take anywhere from eight to 30 minutes. Nigerian legend Fela Kuti was the universally acknowledged Mozart of this approach: he would build a fearsome groove out of highly repetitive and mostly static harmonic materials, and then use it as an extended showcase for instrumental solos, wild dancing, and eye-poppingly bold political rants. Guitarist and songwriter Ebo Taylor, hailing from nearby Ghana, comes from the highlife tradition, which shares with Afro-beat a tendency toward funky, densely arranged, and harmonically static songs, but is also generally a bit lighter in terms of both groove and message. Recording here with the Berlin-based Afrobeat Academy band, Taylor gets deeper into his musical roots than he has on previous releases, creating a powerful set of songs that sound as if they could have been recorded in 1974: on tracks like "Abonsam," the highlife standard "Yaa Amponsah," and the effortlessly groovy title track, Taylor revives the old-school sounds with an energy and joy that belie his age. And on the album-closing "Barrima," he pays sweet tribute to his late wife with a stripped-down vocal-and-guitar composition that will break your heart. It all adds up to an album of unusual emotional depth and resonance.
Biography by Steve Leggett
∏ Born in 1936, guitarist, composer, arranger, bandleader, and producer Ebo Taylor has been a vital figure on the Ghanaian music scene for over six decades. In the late '50s he was active in the influential highlife bands the Stargazers and the Broadway Dance Band, and in 1962 he took his own group, the Black Star Highlife Band, to London, which led to collaborations with Fela Kuti and other African musicians in Britain at the time. Returning to Ghana, he worked as a producer, crafting recordings for Pat Thomas, C.K. Mann, and others, as well as exploring his own projects, combining traditional Ghanaian material with Afro-beat, jazz, and funk rhythms to create his own recognizable sound in the '70s. Taylor's work became popular internationally with hip-hop producers in the 21st century, which led to the release of Love and Death on Strut Records in 2010, his first internationally distributed album. ∏ Its success prompted Strut to issue the stellar retrospective Life Stories: Highlife & Afrobeat Classics 1973-1980, in the spring of 2011. A year later, in 2012, a third Strut album, the deeply personal Appia Kwa Bridge, appeared, and showed that at 76, Taylor was still intensely creative and focused, mixing traditional Fante songs and chants with children's rhymes and personal matters into his own sharp vision of highlife.

Ebo Taylor ≈ Appia Kwa Bridge (2012)

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