Pioneering Nigerian drummer and co-founder of the afrobeat musical genre, Tony Allen has died in Paris, France at age 79.
His manager, Eric Trosset told NPR Allen died of a heart attack on Wednesday evening in Paris.
Trosset told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that Allen took ill in the afternoon and was taken to the Hôpital européen Georges-Pompidou, where he died.
He is widely hailed as one of the founders of Afrobeat alongside his longtime musical partner and music icon Fela Anikulapo Kuti, with whom he played for 15 years.
Allen was the drummer and musical director of late afrobeat icon Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s famous band Africa ’70 in the 1960-70s.
Kuti, who died in 1997, once said that “without Tony Allen, there would be no afrobeat”.
A UK musician Brian Eno had once described Allen as “perhaps the greatest drummer who has ever lived”.
Afrobeat combines elements of West Africa‘s fuji music and highlife styles with American funk and jazz.
Allen, who was born as Tony Oladipo Allen in Lagos in 1940, taught himself how to play drums when he was 18.
He said he learnt his technique by mimicking American jazz drummers like Max Roach, Gene Krupa and Art Blakey.
Allen first met Fela Kuti in 1964, and he 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.
The iconic drummer left the band in 1979, after reported rifts with Kuti over royalties which cost Kuti four separate drummers in order to fill Allen’s void.
Allen emigrated to London in 1984, and later moved to Paris.
He collaborated with a number of artists during his long music career, and was the drummer in The Good, the Bad & the Queen, with Damon Albarn, Paul Simenon and Simon Tong.
Allen released another album, ‘Rejoice’, 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.
Allen’s career and life story have been documented in his 2013 autobiography Tony Allen: Master Drummer of Afrobeat.
See photos of Allen the drummer below:
