Jazz is Dead: Ebo Taylor and Pat Thomas at the UC Theatre

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.

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. 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.