Jazz Is Dead: Ebo Taylor & Pat Thomas

General Admission Standing Room with Limited Seating

Ebo Taylor
Ghanaian guitarist, composer, arranger, bandleader, and producer Ebo Taylor has been a vital
presence in African music for more than half-a-century. During the early '60s, he was active in the influential
highlife bands the Stargazers and the Broadway Dance Band whose singles were mainstays on national radio. In
1962 he took his Black Star Highlife Band to London and collaborated with other African musicians who were also
in Britain at the time, including Fela Kuti. Back in Ghana, he worked as an influential producer, crafting recordings
for Pat Thomas (his future collaborator) and C.K. Mann, among many others. During the 70's, his own musical
projects combined traditional Ghanaian music with Afro-beat, jazz, and funk, creating a trademark sound.

Pat Thomas
Pat Thomas is a Ghanaian vocalist and songwriter famed for his work in the highlife bands of Ebo Taylor and his
own recordings of Afrobeat and Afro-pop.
Born in Agona, in the Ashanti region, Thomas had music almost literally in his DNA, his father was a music theory
instructor and his mother a bandleader. In the 1970s, he moved to Accra to join Ebo Taylor's legendary highlife
band The Blue Monks; their residency at the Tip Toe Night Club is an important part of modern Ghanaian cultural
history. In the later years he moved to the Ivory Coast and produced various records in Afro-beat, Afro-Latin
sounds and reggae melded to funky African disco.