Tony Allen, legendary drummer and Afrobeat co-founder, dies aged 79
Gilles Peterson and Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers pay tribute to the Fela Kuti collaborator, described by Brian Eno as ‘perhaps the greatest drummer who ever lived’
When Tony Allen left Africa ’70, Fela Kuti needed four drummers to replace him. Allen has died in Paris aged 79. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian
The Nigerian drummer Tony Allen, who is credited with creating Afrobeat along with his old bandmate Fela Kuti, died suddenly at the age of 79 in Paris on Thursday, his manager said.
“We don’t know the exact cause of death,” Eric Trosset said, adding it was not linked to the coronavirus.
“He was in great shape, it was quite sudden. I spoke to him at 1pm then two hours later he was sick and taken to Pompidou hospital, where he died.”
Allen was the drummer and musical director of Fela Kuti’s band Africa ’70 in the 1960s and 70s.
During that time the pair created Afrobeat, combining west African musical styles such as highlife and fuji music with US jazz and funk. Afrobeat went on to become one of the totemic genres of 20th century African music.
Over Allen’s thrilling beat, Kuti laid out his revolutionary and pan-African message, which led him to become one of the abiding icons of the struggle for freedom across the continent. “Few people have the kind of communication that Fela and I had when we played music,” Allen said.
Allen and Kuti recorded some 40 albums together as Africa ’70, before parting ways after a mythic 26-year collaboration, with Allen citing Kuti’s disorganisation and debts to him as the reason for his departure. Such was the hole that Allen left in his band, Kuti required several drummers to replace him.
Of his singular style, Allen said: “I try to make my drums sing and turn them into an orchestra. I don’t bash my drums. Instead of bashing, I caress. If you caress your wife, you’ll get good things from your wife; if you beat her, up I’m sure she’ll be your enemy.”
Artists including Major Lazer, Gilles Peterson and Flea have paid tribute to Allen on Twitter.
Born in Lagos in 1940, Allen taught himself to play drums at the age of 18, drawing inspiration from the US jazz greats Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, as well as contemporary African music. He has attributed his versatility to the need to make a living as a jobbing musician in Lagos in the early 60s. “Latin American, African horns, jazz, highlife … you had to be able to play it all because in the club they asked for it,” he said.
In 1969, touring the US for the first time with Kuti, a meeting with west coast jazz drummer Frank Butler inspired him to practise every morning on pillows, making his sticks bounce off them while he was rolling. “It adds flexibility,” he said. “Very effective. Effortless – that’s what I tried to catch from [Butler].” As part of Kuti’s band, he would sometimes drum for six hours without a break.
The British musician and producer Brian Eno has called Allen “perhaps the greatest drummer who ever lived”.
In 1984, Allen moved to London, and by the turn of the millennium had settled in Paris. In the 2000s, he added dub and electronica to his solo output – sometimes to the ire of Afrobeat purists – and became an in-demand collaborator for a younger generation of musicians, among them Jarvis Cocker, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Sébastien Tellier.
On Blur’s 2000 song Music Is My Radar, Damon Albarn sang: “Tony Allen really got me dancing.” The pair would begin regular collaborations soon after. Allen sometimes participated in Albarn’s Africa Express residencies on the continent. He was the drummer in the supergroup the Good, the Bad & the Queen, also featuring Clash bassist Paul Simonon, which released albums in 2007 and 2018. In 2008, Allen, Albarn and Flea formed the supergroup Rocket Juice and the Moon.
Allen was dismissive, however, of a wave of Afrobeat-inspired indie bands such as Vampire Weekend that emerged at the end of the 2000s. “They write the basslines and the horns … but what about the drums? The drummer comes and doesn’t know what to play, because that is the bit with the discipline. He will play what he knows, which doesn’t fit the music.”
His most recent album was Rejoice, a collaboration with Hugh Masekela. The pair met in Nigeria in the 70s, when Allen was playing with Kuti.
This year he planned to work on what he described as a “travel album”, playing with young musicians in Nigeria, London, Paris and the US, “because I want to take care of youngsters – they have messages and I want to bring them on my beat,” he told the Guardian.
Allen, who described himself as a “simple gentle guy”, lived in the Paris suburb Courbevoie.
naptu2: In the late 1970s Fela Anikulapo-Kuti married 28 wives on the same day and he also created a political party called Movement of the People (FEDECO refused to register it). His legendary drummer, Tony Oladipo Allen decided that Fela had derailed and that he was no longer serious, so he left the band and moved to Paris, France, where he has lived ever since. Fela had to hire 2 drummers to play the same rhythms that Tony Allen played.
Fela once did an album with legendary rock drummer, Ginger Baker and Tony Allen and Ginger Baker had a duet on one of the songs. Most people agree that Tony Allen blew Ginger Baker away.
Many experts acknowledge Tony Allen as a co-creator of Afrobeat.
Do you know why they called him the octopus? It's because they said that he has 8 hands. In fact, he sometimes plays with his elbows. This is one of his more recent tracks.
naptu2: That's why they call Tony Allen the Octopus.
Dele Sosimi said that everybody had to play exactly what Fela told them to play. He gave an example of something that happened during rehearsals, when someone deviated and Fela stopped the band, "Who is that? Manager! Deduct two weeks wages"!
(By the way, I had the pleasure of watching Dele Sosimi live in 1989 when Femi came to perform right in my compound).
But Tony Allen was completely different. Fela would compose the melody and take it to Tony Allen and ask, "What can you play to this" and Tony Allen would play and Fela would be like, "Yeah! Yeah! That's it!"
naptu2: I always listened to this song in full in the 1970s and '80s, but in the 2000s many people often chopped up the song into bits. Thankfully, with YouTube's new licensing system, there's an official Fela page and I can show you what I want you to hear.
You don't even need to listen to the whole song. I would like you to listen from the beginning, but my main aim is to get you to listen to the drum solo at the 2:05 minute mark. Please listen to that drum solo. Please, please listen to that drum solo. It'll also be nice if you listen from the beginning, so that you can get the context, but please listen to the drum solo.
naptu2: For a long time the drum solo on Open And Close has been my favourite, followed by the solo on Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense, but that's probably because I have not listened to Drum Solo in a while. I just listened to Drum Solo for the first time in a long while and now I'm confused.
The credits say Fela Anikulapo Kuti featuring Ginger Baker, but it's actually Tony Allen vs Ginger Baker (Fela was a side show ).
When fela see baba in heaven , fela will ask him what keep you so long I have been waiting for you and looking for alternative drummer here too , so that I can start entertaining my people and baba will say I have been organization party on Earth too that what kept me late
17) Fela Anikulapo-Kuti ft Ginger Baker – Live! (1971)
Ginger Baker is an English drummer and founder of the rock band Cream. He spent a lot of time in Nigeria in the 1970s, recording and studying African music and he became a good friend of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. You can see some videos of his interactions with Fela on YouTube. They are taken from his documentary Ginger Baker in Africa. He was instrumental in settling the rift between Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and Paul McCartney. Paul McCartney was bored with recording in the UK and so he decided to record his album “Band On The Run” at EMI studios in Apapa, Lagos in 1973. (You can read about everything that happened during McCartney’s visit on this thread https://www.nairaland.com/1387857/foreign-local-musical-tributes-nigeria ) . McCartney went to watch Fela play at the Shrine, but Fela confronted him and accused him of coming to exploit and steal African music.
Fela had good reason to be concerned. James Brown toured Nigeria in 1970. Fela’s legendary drummer, Tony Allen claims that James Brown sent his arranger, David Mathews, to check him out and that David Mathews took notes about how he played. James Brown’s bassist, William “Bootsy” Collins said that they went to Fela’s club (the Shrine) in Lagos and they were amazed by what they saw. “I mean, this is the James Brown band, but we were totally wiped out! That is one trip I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world”. In another interview he said, “I thought THEY were the greatest, period. Even before I got into the James Brown band, the James Brown band was number one to me. But once I got there and saw Fela and them, then I had second thoughts about it. . .when I heard these cats, it was like another dimension. . .a deeper feel to me. . .it was like, ‘Man, this is IT. We gotta try to be like this!” [laughs] (read more here http://afrofunkforum..com.ng/2006/04/felajames-brown-connection.html?m=1)
So Fela thought that Paul McCartney had also come to steal African music without giving anything back or crediting the source of the music. Fela also went to EMI studios to confront McCartney. Everything was resolved when McCartney and his group played their music for Fela so that he could hear that there wasn’t any African influence in it. Ginger Baker was also able to bring them together and he also invited McCartney to record at his studio in Ikeja.
Tony Allen is probably the most famous former member of Fela’s band. Fela writes the music for his band and all the members of the band must play what he has written. Dele Sosimi (former keyboardist for both Fela and Femi) gave an example in a BBC interview in the early 2000s. He said that they would be rehearsing and Fela would suddenly stop the band. “Who’s that?” he would shout and when he has identified the person that played the offending note, he would order the manager to deduct two weeks wages from the person’s salary. They must always play what Fela has written.
However, it was very different with Tony Allen. Fela would compose the melody and bring it to Tony Allen and ask him, “What can you play to this melody?” and Tony Allen would play something and Fela would go, “Yeah! Yeah! That’s it!” Tony Allen was not just the drummer of Africa 70, he was also the musical director of the band.
Some of my friends who were drummers have nicknamed Tony Allen “the Octopus” because they say that he drums with his hands, elbows and feet, as if he has eight limbs.
In 1978 Fela married 27 women at a go. He also set up a political party called Movement of The People, in order to contest in the 1979 Nigerian presidential elections. Tony Allen said that he also noticed that a lot of strange people started hanging around Fela. He decided that Fela was no longer serious and left the band. Fela had to hire two drummers to play the rhythms that Tony Allen singlehandedly played. Tony Allen has lived in Paris, France for a long time and he records and plays music over there.
There is a track on this album called Drum Solo. It is like a drum battle between Ginger Baker and Tony Allen. Ginger Baker is drumming in the European style while Tony Allen is drumming in the African style. It’s my favourite track on the album.
The first video is of the whole album, so only watch it if you have enough data. The second video is of Drum Solo, the battle between Tony Allen and Ginger Baker.
Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and Ginger Baker – Live! (full album)
Wow. One of the greatest drummers in the entire world. The man that could play drums and make you think there were three drummers when he was the only one doing his magic.
Many people don’t know this man is responsible for very much of Fela’s success and, in fact, Fela was never able to replace him after leaving.
Tony Allen left Fela after the Unknown Soldier saga that cost Fela a lot in every respect. Tony Allen said he wasn’t ready to die and japaed.
You cannot tell the story of Afrobeat without mentioning Tony Allen, he built that sound with Fela.
Rest In Peace, sir. Thanks for blessing us with your talents.
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