World’s greatest drummer’ and afrobeat pioneer dies at 79
Pioneering Nigerian drummer Tony Allen, a co-founder of the afrobeat musical genre, died in Paris on Thursday aged 79, his manager says.
Eric Trosset told NPR radio that he had died of a heart attack. AFP said his death was not linked to coronavirus.
Allen was the drummer and musical director of musician Fela Kuti’s famous band Africa ’70 in the 1960-70s.
Allen’s career and life story were documented in his 2013 autobiography Tony Allen: Master Drummer of Afrobeat.
Allen, who was born in Lagos in 1940, taught himself how to play drums when he was 18.
He said he learnt his technique by listening closely to American jazz drummers Art Blakey and Max Roach. He then created the distinctive polyphonic rhythms of afrobeat and was said to be able to play four different beats with each of his limbs.
Fela, as he was widely known, died in 1997. He once said that “without Tony Allen, there would be no afrobeat”.
You put the beat in Afrobeat. A giant. Rest in paradise and thank you for a lifetime of being quietly epic. Honored that some of my most memorable times on this journey were in studios and on stages with you. Journey well Tony Allen ?? pic.twitter.com/1XzkFoeZQd
— M.anifest – stream #TheGamble (@manifestive) May 1, 2020
Afrobeat combines elements of West Africa’s fuji music and highlife styles with American funk and jazz.
Allen has also been described by UK musician Brian Eno as “perhaps the greatest drummer who has ever lived”.
Trosset led tributes in a Facebook post saying “your eyes saw what most couldn’t see… as you used to say: ‘There is no end'”.
Beninois singer Angelique Kidjo told the BBC’s Newsday programme that she had been hit hard by both Allen’s death and the passing of Cameroonian saxophone legend Manu Dibango in March.
“What I want to remember from them is our musical conversation, our laughter, our joy. They are gone, but they are not gone for me,” she said.
On Instagram, she said that Allen had “changed the history of African music”.
Ghanaian rapper M.anifest tweeted that Allen “put the beat in afrobeat” and thanked him “for a lifetime of being quietly epic”.
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Flea, the bassist for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, who spent time with Allen in London, called him “one of the greatest drummers to ever walk this earth” and described him as his “hero”.
“What a wildman, with a massive, kind and free heart and the deepest one-of-a-kind groove,” Flea said on Instagram.
