ebo taylor in concert

After one year in the “Cathedral of Electricity” - built by the renowned architect Hans Heinrich Müller from 1926-1928 - SAVVY Contemporary will like to celebrate with you. Thanks to SAVVY Contemporary’s engagements in the arts and critical discourses in Berlin-Neukölln, the building was resurrected.

On August 9th we will commemorate this move with a concert by legendary Ghanaian highlife musician EBO TAYLOR! The versatile guitarist, singer and songwriter recorded his last and much acclaimed album “Appia Kwa Bridge” in Berlin with members of the Afrobeat Academy. This album is a sturdy set mixing Afrobeat and funk with traditional Fante songs and highlife sounds. Taylor rose to fame following the wartime big band highlife pioneers like E.T. Mensah and became a major figure in Ghanaian highlife during the 1950s and '60s as highlife exploded, cutting his teeth with leading big bands like Stargazers and Broadway Dance Band. Several decades later Ebo Taylor is still one of the most popular highlife musicians, tirelessly touring Europe, the US and Africa.

The new space enabled SAVVY Contemporary to expand its activities and realize a range of exhibitions, performances, science and art lectures, putting up an archive on German colonial history (Colonial Neighbours), a performance arts documentation centre (SAVVY.doc), an open library and a residency program for curators, writers and artists. The highlights of the past year include the research and exhibition projects “Giving Contours to Shadows”, “Wahala”, “Perhaps All Dragons in Our Lives Are Princesses: On Somatic Morphing” and “Rendez-Vous: Sortie de Mon Corps”.

We thank all our supporters, collaborators and visitors for making our move to the new space and the program of the past year possible and we look forward to realizing our 6-chaptered project for 2015 “The Eye of the Whirlwind – On Commodification and Desire” with you. We will continue to dedicate ourselves to the challenge of investigating the ‘threshold’ between the West and the Non-West, creating a platform for epistemological diversity, and critically reflecting on as well as questioning discourses around “Western art” and “non-Western art”.

Put on your dancing shoes!