TONY ALLEN
- AFROBEAT -
G'day folks,
Tony Oladipo Allen is a Nigerian drummer, composer and songwriter who currently lives and works in Paris.
Nigeria of the
late ‘60s was bursting with musical invention and political resistance. At the
center of this fertile scene was percussionist Tony Allen, the premier drummer
and a key architect of the sound known as Afrobeat.
Born in Lagos,
Nigeria’s most populous city, Allen taught himself to drum. His only formal
education was through his father’s record collection, which largely consisted
of traditional Yoruba, a form of percussive folk music highly popular
throughout West Africa. While working as an engineer for a local radio station,
Allen was also exposed to American jazz and a burgeoning Ghanaian highlife
scene, distinguished by upbeat, Western-inflected, but distinctly African pop
music.
Joining with
Fela Kuti in 1964, Allen formed highlife combo Koola Lobitas. This
collaboration would set both musicians on a path toward legendary status.
Following their 1969 tour through a United States riven by protest, Fela,
Allen, and company returned home with a new mission.
Renaming his
unit Fela and Africa ’70, Kuti adapted a new musical approach that took direct
aim at Nigeria’s military dictatorship. With Allen at the kit, Africa ’70
created a highly charged, politically provocative musical hybrid called
Afrobeat. Afrobeat turned highlife loose with long instrumental grooves,
politically provocative themes, soulful exhortations, and—courtesy of Tony
Allen—furiously-paced polyrhythmic beats. Africa ’70 gave way to an explosion
of creativity, spawning a legion of like-minded young musicians and proliferating
its sound throughout the Caribbean and Latin America.
Over a matter
of disputed royalties, Tony Allen departed his bandleader in the late 1970s,
taking a few of Fela’s sidemen with him. Allen’s solo career not only continued
to expand on the creative terrain occupied by Afrobeat, but also led to his
coinage of Afrofunk. Increasingly compelled by the role of western forms like
rock, electronic music, and hip hop, Tony Allen has become well-known for his
collaborations with younger musicians like Blur’s Damon Albarn, Air, and
Charlotte Gainsbourg.
To be certain,
the late Fela Kuti was the leading force in the creation of Afrobeat. As
bandleader, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and outsized persona, Fela was not
just Africa’s most important popular musician, but also a spiritual and
political leader fulfilling a role not unlike that which Bob Marley occupied
for Jamaica. As his musical foil and the only member of Fela’s band also
responsible for authoring his own arrangements, Tony Allen is a key architect
without whom there would be no Afrobeat.
Allen
continues to assert his relevance to date. With more than 70 records already
under his belt as a bandleader, sideman, and collaborator, Allen earned
widespread acclaim for a solo album released just last year, at age 74.
Clancy's comment: Another champion musician.
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