Allen was pivotal to the development of Afrobeat, having come
up with the fiercely tricky, deceptively simple-sounding rhythm that
underpinned the genre. He was in the chair – seated low, calmly firing
on all cylinders – for Fela Kuti’s highlife-jazz and Afrobeat bands over
15 years, a partnership Allen’s biographer Michael E. Veal likened to
those of Coltrane and Elvin Jones or Miles and Philly Joe Jones.
“Without Tony Allen there would be no Afrobeat,” reckoned Fela of his
powerhouse timekeeper. When Allen left Africa 70 in 1979, it took no
fewer than four drummers to replace him.
Modest and quietly confident, Allen was an 18-year-old electrician
when he took up playing kit drums, inspired by heroes including Art
Blakey, Max Roach and Ghanaian drummer Guy Warren (later Kofi Ghanaba)
and building a vocabulary of rhythmic patterns with roots across West
Africa. A string of solo albums in the Seventies paved the way for a
move to Europe and a hybrid post-Fela sound that cracked open Afrobeat
with inflections from electronica, dub, R&B and rap. Allen’s 13th
release, 2006’s Lagos No Shaking, saw him re-stake his claim in Afrobeat, recording Secret Agent
in 2009 and wielding his Midas-touch magic on projects variously helmed
by Damon Albarn, Oumou Sangaré and techno DJ Jeff Mills. Allen’s most
recent release, Rejoice, his collaboration with late South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela, was reviewed in Jazzwise issue 251.
Allen fully re-embraced jazz in 2017 with instrumental album The Source
and an Art Blakey tribute EP (complete with Afrobeat reworking of
‘Moanin’), both on Blue Note. By this time Allen had long settled into
his status as cultural icon and beloved elder statesmen: selfie-strewn
stories of his largesse as mentor and collaborator, of his own-brand of
wry humility, enliven Facebook posts. Memories – such as those
surrounding his final, triumphant London gig at Hackney’s Church of
Sound in March – are vivid, and bittersweet. A pioneer.