Tony allen's 70th birthday
& African Soul Rebels UK Tour
@ the Barbican
6 October 2010 - 19 February 2008

Click an image to enlarge.

Tony Allen biography

24 years after leaving Fela Kuti’s band, Tony Allen remains a restless and potent trailblazer for new African musical adventures. Allen grew up in Lagos through the 1940’s and 50’s, before he discovered the drums which changed his life. He turned away from a brief but promising career as student, mechanic and electronic engineer, inevitably turning towards music. His father, an automobile engineer, listened to Juju and other indigenous Yoruba music on the radio. He would often sing and play instruments himself at home with his children. But the teenage Tony was out at Lagos nightspots soaking up the new Highlife sounds - Nigerian acts like Rex Lawson and wikkid Ghanaian acts like the Ramblers and E.T. Mensah. He was hooked....but he had no drum kit. Musicians in Lagos could not afford their own instruments. They belonged to the clubs and hotels and you had to be hired by the house band if you wanted to get your eager hands on the sticks and your restless feet on the pedals. ‘Sir’ Victor Olayia (aka Evil Genius of Highlife) was the man who lit Tony’s fuse. His band (the Cool Cats) gigged around Nigeria throughout the 50’s in the wake of Mensah Highlife hysteria. He always had an eye for young talent. Fela Ransome Kuti had sung with him for a couple of years, before he left for London to study music. Allen hung out with the Cool Cats and started playing claves. His big chance came when the drummer left and their new leader Sivor Lawson offered him the sticks.

Allen listened to US Jazz on record and on the radio. If Art Blakey was his god, Jesus was undoubtedly drum pioneer Kofi Ghanaba (aka Guy Warren of Ghana) who had taken Afro-ryddims live and direct to jazz stars like Dizzy Gillespie, when he gigged in the US through the fifties. After the Cool Cats disbanded, he played with Agu Norris and the Heatwaves, the Nigerian Messengers and the Melody Makers. Then in 1964, Fela Kuti asked Allen to audition for a Jazz DJ at Nigeria Broadcasting. Kuti had just returned after four years Music Theory and Trumpet study at Trinity College in London. He was looking for the right drummer for his Jazz-Highlife band, Koola Lobitos. After the audition Kuti said, “How come you are the only guy in Nigeria who plays like this?” Together they would go on to create some of the most significant music of the twentieth century, Afrobeat.

When Allen left Kuti’s band, he would be replaced by four drummers, one man just couldn’t replace Allen on an all night set! Allen’s first major gig was an all drummer show with Khofi Ghanaba at National Theatre in Lagos. He then went on to perform with the likes of King Sunny Ade in London and Ray Lema in Paris. The 90’s saw him working on the dub soaked, future Afrobeat of the Black Voices album for far sighted and hip Comet Records, produced by Doctor L, incendiary DJ and pillar of the Parisian electronica elite. As the new century came round, Tony gave us the deconstructed jazzy Afrobeat of Psycho On Da Bus.