Tony Allen, Afrobeat pioneer hailed as ‘greatest drummer who has ever lived’

Tony Allen, the supremely talented Nigerian drummer and bandleader, who has died aged 79, helped to pioneer – with the great singer Fela Kuti – the sound of Afrobeat, a shimmering, polyrhythmic West African music that went on to become an influence around the world.

Allen’s versatility as a drummer ensured that he was in great demand; basing himself in London and Paris from 1984, he led his own band and worked with all manner of musicians, including the Blur frontman Damon Albarn, the American techno DJ Jeff Mills, the Finnish electronic composer Jimi Tenor and the South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela.

Tony Oladipo

Allen was born in

Lagos into a working-class family who valued education. Aged 18, he was inspired to take up the drums by his love of modern American jazz. At the time he was training as a technician for Nigerian national radio, but after four months of playing drums he announced to his dismayed parents that he was determined to be a musician.

Alongside jazz, Allen drew on his father’s love of juju, a Yoruba musical form, and Ghanaian high-life music. His genius was to blend these different influences into a unique whole, and from the late 1950s he played firstly claves – percussion blocks usually made of wood – and then drums with bands working in the clubs and bars of Lagos.

In 1964 he met Fela Kuti, an aspiring musician from one of Nigeria’s elite families who had begun playing jazz while studying medicine in London. Kuti had a vision of creating a West African music that blended jazz with high-life, and when Allen joined his Koola Lobitos band, they worked on developing this fusion.

Initially, the band were popular only in Lagos, but after a 1969 tour of the US, where they were exposed to the music of Sly Stone and James Brown, they changed their name to Africa ’70 and became a more powerful, politicised outfit.

Allen was band leader, developing the complex polyrhythms that powered the huge ensemble, while Kuti composed the melodies, sang, and played trumpet and keyboards. Their subsequent huge popularity across West Africa – they released about three LPs a year – led to discord between Allen and Kuti, the drummer feeling cheated out of publishing credits and royalties by the increasingly egocentric vocalist.

While still a member of Africa ’70 Allen released three solo albums – Jealousy (1975), Progress (1977) and No Accommodation For Lagos (1979) – but by late 1979 he had had enough and left. His first post-Kuti album, No Discrimination, was released in 1980 to a strong response: by then Kuti commanded an international audience, and many listeners were aware that Allen had been his rhythmic engine. Nigeria’s disintegrating political situation led Allen to move to London in 1984, and he spent the rest of his life living there or in Paris.

He recorded and toured constantly, both as a band leader and in collaboration with other musicians: he released more than a dozen solo albums while participating in many sideprojects.

Unlike rock drummers, who are celebrated for their power, Allen always appeared extremely relaxed behind his drum kit. He could adapt to all kinds of contemporary music – ‘‘afrofunk’’ was how he liked to describe his own sound – and led many other musicians to seek him out. Brian Eno described him as ‘‘perhaps the greatest drummer who has ever lived’’, while Damon Albarn, having sung about dancing to Allen’s music on Blur’s 2000 single Music is My Radar, suggested they work together.

They formed The Good, The Bad & The

Queen, along with Paul Simonon, the former Clash bassist, and Simon Tong, formerly keyboard player and guitarist with the Verve. They released their eponymous debut album in 2007 and Merrie Land in 2018.

Allen’s 2017 album A Tribute to Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers paid tribute to the musicians who had inspired him to take up drums. In March this year Rejoice, recorded with the late South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela, was released to excellent reviews.

‘‘I still challenge myself every time with my playing,’’ Allen wrote in Tony Allen: An Autobiography of the Master Drummer of Afrobeat. ‘‘I still want to play something impossible, something that I never played before. That’s what I’m after.’’

Tony Allen is survived by his wife and children. –

‘‘I still want to play something impossible, something that I never played before. That’s what I’m after.’’

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