Tony Allen: The drummer who helped create Afrobeat

"I want my drums to sound like a piano"

It is cause for celebration that the Jazz Is Dead label has released their eighteenth record, and it features the work of drummer Tony Allen, who passed away in 2020. The session that resulted in this album was recorded in 2018, and the fact that five years have passed, two since Allen's death, make you wonder if maybe they didn't think they had a solid record to cull from the sessions. Not to worry, the team at JID have assembled a record that's thoroughly enjoyable as well as providing an entry point for those not yet familiar with this music legend's work.

Photo: Tore Sætre / Wikimedia

Allen has been called the inventor of Afrobeat, and his boss at the time, Fela Kuti, has acknowledged that without Allen his groundbreaking music would not have existed. Allen's drumming style for this new music was energetic and orchestral--whereas most Nigerian drummers thought in terms of using only two or possibly three limbs, Allen sought to use all four, playing a hybrid that managed to combine elements of jazz, highlife, Latin dance music, and Yoruban folk music. “I want people to hear my drums, I want my drums to sound like a piano," he once said. "You have to hear different things at the same time, like a chord.”

Tony Allen taught himself to play jazz drums while working at a Nigerian radio station. His chief inspirations were Art Blakey and Max Roach, two of the most physical drummers in the jazz firmament. His time playing with Fela Kuti's Africa 70 band is the stuff of legends. Allen is one of those drummers gifted enough to invent a new beat, Afrobeat, a sound and rhythm that would become increasingly influential in the pop music not only of the West, but of the entire world.

Brian Eno identifies Allen as present for the birth of one of the three greatest beats in the history of music, and he certainly was influenced by it.

Allen would engage in all night sets at The Shrine, Kuti's club, sometimes playing for six hours straight without a break. They were heady times, marked by Kuti's persecution by the Nigerian government for his uncompromising political stances. Kuti's lifestyle, maintaining 27 wives and reportedly not fairly paying his musicians, was a breaking point for Allen eventually, and he chose to go his own way. Kuti participated in Allen's first few solo outings, Jealousy and Progress, which were sometimes political, but a bit more laid back, more centered on the groove itself.

In 1982 Tony Allen moved to London, where he lived for a few years, recording occasionally as well as playing session work. His recording NEPA (Never Expect Power Always), recorded with his band Africa 2000, is an exhilarating modernization of the Afrobeat sound, and one can immediately hear the influence that Brian Eno took from Afrobeat. With added electro claps and other elements signifying the rise of electronic music and its integration with Afrobeat, NEPA is one of the best Afrobeat albums, surpassing even Fela Kuti's recorded work.

Allen moved to France in the mid-eighties, where he spent some time laying relatively low. Seeing the influence that Afrobeat was beginning to have over Western pop music and worldwide funk and soul, Allen began to reach out to musicians in France who were part of a perceived revival of Afrobeat, mixing it with hip hop and dub production techniques to get something both reminiscent of the Fela/Allen sound as well as fresh and new. Allen, interested in new music and technologies, began to develop relationships with French electronic artists such as Frederic Galliano and Doctor L. He saw not only the opportunity to take Afrobeat in new directions, but also the opportunity to exert its influence through personally playing with musicians from other styles, thus ensuring that it is passed down in some form. Pretty genius.

Working with Doctor L, aka Liam Farrell, Allen recorded the album Black Voices in 1999, and it both redefined what Afrobeat could be and took its creator far from Lagos, to a truly international dimension. Allen provides the drums and keyboards, while Doctor L does his studio magic and adds additional elements to the performance. The result is far cooler than NEPA, but every bit as mesmerizing in its own way. The two artists toured behind Black Voices in 2000, and they recorded material along the way in hotel rooms and on the tour bus along with the band, Jean Phi Dary, Jeff Kellner and Cesar Anot. The resulting album Psyco On Da Bus, was released by Comet in 2001, and it provides an even further push into modern territory, kind of like the On the Corner of Afrobeat. Said Allen: “Younger people are coming into (Afrobeat) right now. And I personally don't want to be past, I want to be future. Young people like hiphop, and techno, which is what I must think about. It's the direction I want to take. It's an experiment I've wanted to try."

The following year Allen returned with Homecooking, a record that combined everything that Allen had been doing and on which he collaborated with Damon Albarn as well as a variety of other guest artists. Allen remembers their first session together:

"On the first day in the studio, Damon didn’t record anything because we were enjoying ourselves too much. He came with two boxes of champagne and everyone got boozed and he decided he’d take the music back to his own studio and finish it there. That was the beginning of our friendship and since then we’ve done a lot of different things." 

Among the 'lot of different things' that they worked on together were the recordings under the moniker The Good, The Bad & The Queen that also included bassist Paul Simenon (The Clash) and guitarist Simon Tong (Verve).

Homecooking propelled Allen into the mix of modern music, making him far more than the originator of the Afrobeat drum sound. He continued into the new century with increasing momentum, releasing Live in 2004 and Lagos No Shaking in 2006. That album marked a return to his roots, literally, as it was recorded in Lagos over ten days and featured Fela Kuti's saxophonist, Baba Ani as well as local singers. 2009's Secret Agent is also Afrocentric and political, if a bit more polished sounding.

During this busy period Allen also recorded with Finnish multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, and bandleader Jimi Tenor, resulting in the fourth release in the Strut label's Inspiration Innovation Series, a group of recordings that sought to pair innovative musicians. For those who love groove oriented music this is well worth checking out, skirting an area between post-bop jazz, African music, rock, and funk.

In 2014 Allen recorded Film of Life in France with The JazzBastards playing and producing alongside a spate of guest performers. The record is someting of a review of his career, but it doesn't sound retro, demonstrating how much this artist remained on the cutting edge at the age of 74. Allen's last releases were with Blue Note, the first an EP tribute to Art Blakey that adapted his classic post bop composition "Moanin'" to an Afrobeat feel. Then came the full length LP The Source, a collaboration with Yann Jankielewicz, who served  as his arranger and collaborator since Secret Agent. The two swapped records by Lester Bowie, Gil Evans, Charles Mingus, and other jazz composer/arrangers as they wrote the material for The Source. With a five piece horn section in tow, The Source is the jazziest of Allen's recordings and one that listeners would be foolish to pass up.

In 2019 World Circuit released Rejoice, the result of sessions with Allen and South African trumpet star Hugh Masekela. Recorded in 2010 by producer Nick Gold (Buena Vista Social Club), the unfinished sessions sat in a vault until after Masekela's death, when Allen and Gold, with the blessing of Masakela's estate, finished the sessions in London. The result is a very enjoyable combination of jazz swing, South African township, and even Afro funk. The two artists supplement their playing with chanting and singing as well.

Tony Allen passed away on April 30, 2020, and a few posthumous releases have come along since then.  In 2021 Blue Note released There Is No End, a hip hop record that Allen had been working on with producer Vincent Taeger, aka Tiger Tigre. Though Allen was unable to complete the record, he had recorded all of his drum parts, and Taeger finished the record, which is exhilirating and vital, showing that the drummer retained his ear and appetite for the new sounds that both grew from and could contribute to the foundation he'd created with Afrobeat.

Which brings us to JID018. Tony Allen is a natural for the Jazz Is Dead series, as Adrian Youge and Ali Shaheed Muhammed would have been familiar with not only his work with Kuti but his later work with a variety of hip hop DJs and producers both in France and the U.S. The fact that a lot of Allen's records have been constructed in much the same manner that Youge and Muhammed are doing here must have added considerable confidence to the project.

The grooves here run a wide gamut, from an action film rock groove to seventies TV lounge jazz to Nigerian greasy spoon music--these are obviously my own references and your mileage will vary, but I'll be surprised if most listeners don't find it a worthy addition to Allen's recorded oeuvre.

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