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WED 6th OCTOBER

Tony Allen 70 - Nigeria 50

Celebrating Tony Allen’s 70th Birthday and 50 years of Nigeria’s independence, this concert features guest collaborators who he has worked with over the years.

 

  

Feat. Seun Kuti, Cheikh Lo, Thandiswa, Pee Wee Ellis, Jimi Tenor, Jason Yarde, Byron Wallen, Keziah Jones, Eska Mtungwasi, Ty, Wunmi & more...

Biography
Tony Allen

Born in Nigeria in 1940 of mixed Nigerian and Ghanaian parentage, Tony Allen is perhaps the most highly-regarded African drum set player ever to emerge. Musicians of all backgrounds marvel at his uniquely polyrhythmic style. Allen belongs on one hand to a tradition of African drum set playing associated with the Ghanaian drummer Kofi Ghanaba and historically rooted in British military drumming, big-band jazz drumming, and indigenous percussion traditions. However, he is also an African exponent of the African-American tradition of modern jazz drumming typified by musicians such as Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, and Max Roach.

 Tony Allen's formative years were spent digesting these influences while apprenticing in various Nigerian bands during the late 1950s, performing the pan-Anglophone West African popular music style then known as highlife. But he came to international prominence in the 1960s as a member of the band of the late Nigerian bandleader Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, with whom he played for 15 years. Fela Kuti is himself recognized as one of the most important and influential African popular musicians/composers of the post-colonial era, and it is widely accepted that Tony Allen was his crucial collaborator in the synthesis of jazz, funk and highlife which resulted in the style known as Afrobeat. Tony Allen’s work with Fela is documented on over 30 recordings and today, he remains the primary exponent of Afrobeat.

Tony Allen's own recordings, made since leaving Fela’s band in 1978, are diverse in style and fascinating fusions of Afrobeat with other styles of world popular music. These works find him in the collaborative company of Nigerian juju musicians such as Fatayi Rolling Dollar, electronica musicians such as Doctor L, American funk musicians such as Michael "Clip" Payne and Gary "Bone" Cooper, and musicians from around Africa and the Caribbean. After playing for years in the shadows of better-known musicians, Tony Allen is now starting to receive the worldwide credit he deserves as one of the most dynamic players of the drum set.

Text by Michael E. Veal

6 October 2010 / 19:30
Barbican Hall
Tickets: £13.50 - 22.50
Subject to availability

More details @
http://www.tony-allen.com/