Tony Oladipo Allen, chief drummer for African music legend, Fela Kuti who died in Paris on April 30 and in fairness, the news of his demise was the first time many aficionados of African music heard of him.
His talent was relegated to the background by Fela Kuti whose legendary talent and social activism carried a larger-than-life persona that even authorities struggled to contain.
But Allen held his own. He was the man Kuti could not perform without, the man who saw to the rhythm as Kuti shouted out the words to such famous classics as Zombie, Water No Get Enemy or Teacher, Don’t Teach Me Nonsense in concerts home and abroad.
It is argued by many that Kuti was the earliest pioneer of what has come to be known as Afrobeat. But the genre that gives so much weight to sound over lyrics could not have been conceptualized without Allen’s drums.
Kuti himself is reported to have said: “Without Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat.”
But it was the influential British recording artist and music theorist Brian Eno, who described Allen as “perhaps the greatest drummer who has ever lived.”
A Great songwriter and composer
Allen was not simply a drummer but also a songwriter and composer of significant repute too. On his ability to compose music, Allen once said in an interview:
“Fela used to write out the parts for all the musicians in the band (Africa ’70). I was the only one who originated the music I played. Fela would ask what type of rhythm I wanted to play.… You can tell a good drummer because we… have four limbs… and they are… playing different things… the patterns don’t just come from Yoruba… [but] other parts of Nigeria and Africa”
Allen formed his own group in the 1980s and wrote some of the songs the group put out, including the hit No Discrimination.
Allen did not like Fela Kuti’s “militarism”
Allen loved making music with Fela Kuti but he never really got around to Kuti’s insistence on squaring up to an unforgivably abusive Nigerian government.
In an interview with Tim Jonze for The Guardian in 2016, Allen recounted:
“I detest singing militant. It’s not my thing. What [Fela] was challenging, he was right. But it was too direct and that’s why he got all this sh*t.
There were too many arrests, too many bombardments. You’re a musician – why do you leave yourself to be beaten up all the time like that?”
He once called Kuti “greedy”
Tony Allen left Fela Kuti’s band in 1979 after over a decade, calling the legendary musician “greedy”. Allen, a consummate professional in his own right, felt that Kuti was insincere in how credits and royalties were given.
Allen was also not on board with the entourage Kuti is known to have kept, a rolling stone bunch of women entertainers and bohemian artists. One could say that Allen had not really fallen for the debauchery of superstardom.
But Allen always maintained that even after he had left the group, he considered Kuti a friend. He recalled telling himself, “This guy [Kuti] is going to be an icon, and they will kill him one day.”
How He Overcame Heroin Addiction
In that interview with The Guardian, Allen credits his overcoming of heroin addiction in the first few years in France to his own willpower.
“I knew I had to fight it myself. The cold turkey business, I won’t have it every day. It’s one full day of that you suffer,” Allen said in that interview.
“So when you come out, you see the day – and you see the feeling of your body, and all of a sudden you see brightness that you never saw.
Once you see that, you don’t want to go back to darkness. In one week, you are as clear as anything, you know? That’s how I did mine,” he added.
