I decided to do a cover of Ebo Taylor’s Love and Death. Ebo Taylor is a contemporary Ghanaian artist notorious for intertwining Ghanaian Highlife, Jazz, Calypso, and many more genres of the diaspora. Taylor’s vocal style is reminiscent of James Brown who had a huge influence on African identity and blackness. Fela Kuti and Taylor met in college and made music together. However, Kuti’s musical style was more pop based and Taylor’s was more jazz based and historically, there have always been tensions between Ghanians and Nigerians. Nevertheless, both of them have spearheaded a movement in African music in their respective genres that utilized an amalgamation of genres and styles from different countries and cultures.
I took an interest in Ebo Taylor because he is one of my uncle’s favorite artists and I find it fascinating how he is still playing live music at the ripe age of 87. “Love and Death” is a perfect example of how Taylor blends different styles with the instruments he uses. The guitar and percussion have High life rhythms while the vocals and brass have jazz melodies and notations.
I put my own spin on the song and at first, I wanted to make it as close to the real thing as possible. But then found difficulty replicating the high energy brass intro with the Logic software instruments and decided to simplify it. The first thing I worked on was the percussion which was the hardest part. I am not the best at using Logic, especially when it comes to percussion, so it was a lot of trial and error. I decided to go with a Latin percussion pack because of the intersections between African, Caribbean, and Latin instruments. I then recorded the guitar which were simple F and Em chords. I’m pretty sure the chords are more complex than that but I, again, wanted to simplify so, I just stuck to open chords. I then recorded the guitar but then the song sounded really barren and realized I forgot to add a bassline. Then, I added the vocals. The song is longer than 3 minutes and half of the song is in English and half of it is in Twi but to my parent’s disappointment, I don’t speak Twi. So, I just sang the English part. I still was not satisfied with the percussion and added a bongo to fill in the empty gaps. This is where I get a little bit crazy. I tried so hard to fight adding synthesizers to the mix but my desires won and I added an atmospheric pad to the whole song to make it more celestial sounding. Then at the chorus I added a synth lead and had to add a mellotron as well. Lastly, I recorded myself noodling on the guitar randomly because I thought it could benefit with more guitar that wasn’t just chords. Overall, it is not the cleanest song and it is not mastered (I have been using Logic on and off for years and still don’t know how) but I had fun making it.