# Tony Allen, afrobeat’s foundational drummer, has died at age 79: Video, Photo

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2020/05/01/tony-allen-afrobeats-foundational-drummer-has-died-at-age-79-video-photo/
- Published: 2020-05-01T14:08:09+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Drummer Tony Allen has died at age 79. He is widely hailed as one of the founders
of Afrobeat alongside his longtime musical partner Fela Kuti, with whom he played
for 15 years.**

Allen died Wednesday evening in Paris of a heart attack, his manager, Eric Trosset,
told NPR. Trosset told Agence France-Presse that Allen took ill in the afternoon
and was taken to the Hôpital européen Georges-Pompidou, where he died.

Behind the kit, Allen used his whole body — laying out intricate polyrhythms with
all four limbs. (He was so dexterous, it often seemed like he had more than four.)“
Without Tony Allen,” Kuti famously remarked, “there would be no Afrobeat.”

Allen was born Tony Oladipo Allen in Lagos, Nigeria in 1940. He didn’t begin playing
the drums until age 18 — but once he began, that was it. Just months later, while
he was working as an electrical technician for a radio station in his native Lagos,
he announced to his disappointed parents that he intended to become a musician.

Allen met Kuti in the early 1960s, when both were gigging around Lagos. By 1964,
they were playing together: first American-style jazz, and then, for about five 
years, a more African-inflected, highlife jazz. In 1969, they formed the legendary
band Africa 70.

Allen came of age idolizing such American jazz drummers as Gene Krupa, Art Blakey
and Max Roach. As he told NPR’s Weekend Edition in 2010, “Fela wrote like a singer;
I write like a drummer.”

That highly combustible mix was exactly the magic of Afrobeat: thickly layered horns
and soaring vocals with wry lyrics, laid over an unforgettably mighty, driving groove.
It was a sweaty, exuberant amalgamation of African styles like highlife and juju,
American jazz, and something entirely new and thoroughly self-confident.

In a blazing run, Allen recorded more than 30 albums with Kuti and Africa 70 — including
the classics _Shakara_, _Expensive Shit_, _Sorrow Tears and Blood _and _Zombie. 
_The two also recorded three albums under Allen’s name: 1975’s _Jealousy_, 1977’
s _Progress _and 1979’s _No Accommodation For Lagos_.

But eventually they split apart, sparring over money, credits and royalties — not
to mention Allen’s distaste for what he called Kuti’s “militarism” and the constant
entourage around Kuti, which Allen found parasitic. Allen left Africa 70 in 1979.
He went first to London, and then settled in Paris.

Later in his career, Allen ranged broadly in terms of his musical tastes — exploring
everything from Afrofunk and American jazz to rap and electronica. His later collaborators
included singer Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz, the Clash’s Paul Simonon, and
guitarist Simon Tong of the Verve who together recorded as The Good, the Bad & the
Queen.

Allen released another album, _Re_[_j_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxPpDAv3ZQI)
_oice_, just last month; it was a collaboration with the late South African trumpeter
Hugh Masekela, who died in 2018. The two artists recorded together in 2010, but 
the album was not finished until the summer of 2019.

![Drummer Tony Allen, performing at the Glastonbury Festival in England in 2010.
Allen died Thursday at age 79.](https://i0.wp.com/mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/
p/shared/npr/styles/placed_wide/nprshared/202005/848849596.jpg?resize=640%2C480&
ssl=1)

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