Nigerian drummer and composer Tony Allen, who worked closely with musician Fela Kuti as a pioneer of the Afrobeat genre, died in Paris aged 79, his manager said.
The Afrobeat sound, which rose to prominence in Nigeria in the 1970s, combined organ riffs with West African drum patterns and brass instruments. Allen’s drumming was a key part of the rhythmic structure that underpinned the fusion of jazz, funk and West African melodies.
“Without Tony Allen, there would be no afrobeat,” Fela Kuti once said of the drummer and musical director of Kuti’s influential band Africa ’70
Allen died on Wednesday evening in Paris of a heart attack, National Public Radio (NPR) cited his manager Eric Trosset as saying on Thursday.
“Farewell Tony! Your eyes saw what most couldn’t see. You are the coolest person on Earth! As you used to say, “There is no end,” Trosset said in a tribute posted on Facebook.
The songs were usually over 10 minutes long and Kuti’s lyrics were often angry diatribes against corruption, African dictators and Nigeria’s military regimes.
“The epic Tony Allen, one of the greatest drummers to ever walk this earth has left us,” Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea wrote in a tribute post. “What a wildman, with a massive, kind and free heart and the deepest one-of-a-kind groove. Fela Kuti did not invent afrobeat, Fela and Tony birthed it together.” Kuti, who died in 1997, similarly confirmed the place of Allen in the evolution of afrobeat.
Reuters could not immediately reach Allen’s manager for comment.
Reporting by Alexis Akwagyiram in Lagos and Bate Felix in Paris Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky; with additional reporting by The West African Pilot News
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