Remembering Tony Allen: “His sound was so beautiful, so sensual, so chic, that it stood out immediately”

April 30, 2020. Paris. A hushed phone call spreads the news: Tony Oladipo Allen, the rhythmic sage of Afrobeat, has left this world at 79. In London, a young drummer stops mid-groove; not far from him, Damon Albarn grits his teeth and pushes on to finish their album; in New York, a spoken-word poet cues up an old Fela vinyl. For a moment, Allen’s beat seems to falter. But almost immediately, it returns in a dozen different places: a looping hi-hat in a hip-hop track, a jazz combo’s simmering ride cymbal, a throbbing Afrobeat bass drum on a distant stage. Did Tony Allen’s pulse ever really stop? In the five years since his passing, it has only grown louder and more varied, a testament to a posthumous career as dynamic and alive as the man himself. “This man could have lived another 150 years and kept creating new worlds”, said fellow Nigerian Ben Okri, who performed on the track ‘Cosmosis’ (from Allen’s 2021 album There is No End). This enduring – and endearing – legacy of Allen is continuing to open doors for artists and collaborators only too keen to share seasoned reflections on where Allen’s percussive magic came from, how it flowered and how it continues to echo into music spheres as far afield as Bogotá, Harlem, London and Senegal.

Allen’s friends and admirers now describe him in almost mystical terms. Trinidadian poet Anthony Joseph calls him “a master drummer… a scientist, a magician,” marvelling at a playing style so complex that “he had seven hands.” Yet this Nigerian wizard of rhythm carried a “gentle soul”, radiating what Joseph calls “a lightness, a fluttering feeling”. That lightness was Allen’s trademark behind the kit: a subtle, sensual touch uncommon in the bombastic world of drummers. French percussionist Vincent Taeger, who produced There is No End, recalls being struck by “the finesse of Tony’s playing” the first time he heard him. “Incredible, a drummer who doesn’t play loud. His sound was so beautiful, so sensual, so chic, that it stood out immediately.”

Allen could generate intense grooves without brute force. As Taeger puts it, he spoke in quiet volumes long before unplugged was cool. What was Tony Allen’s secret? Part of it was technique. Senegalese bassist Alune Wade vividly remembers watching Allen from just a few feet away on stage, determined to understand why Tony’s drumming sounded so different. He noticed Tony’s unorthodox grip: “He held the sticks in the middle, not at the end,” Wade recounts. “By choking up on the drumsticks, Tony softened his attack, giving his music a gentler tone.” That unusual grip required exquisite control. “You could literally hear the nuanced ‘voice’ of his arm in each stroke,” says Wade. The result was a uniquely precise and light touch, utterly distinct from drummers who “beat the hell” out of the drums. Nick Gold, whose World Circuit label released two albums by Allen, observed the same enigma: “If you were standing at a distance, you couldn’t even see Tony’s arms or legs moving. It was really weird,” Gold laughs. “All of these rhythms and musicality [coming out], but you can’t see him moving. He was very, very subtle and contained in how he played.”

Despite the economy of motion, Tony’s internal engine was extraordinarily complex. Gold remembers that in studio mixing sessions, Allen insisted every component of his drum kit be heard, each limb contributing to an interlocking puzzle. Tony spoke not of “beats” but of “patterns,” and regarded his four limbs as “different characters… people playing together” in a conversation. But Allen never stood still. For fellow Nigerian journeyman Keziah Jones, Allen was the “intellectual musician… He was a man with a jazzman’s ear and a street drummer’s instinct. He managed to take this very traditional localised style – our Yoruba Egba rhythms from Abeokuta, near Lagos – and transform it into a modern format, and then use it to play other genres all over the world. That was brilliant.”

Michael E Veal is a Yale professor and co-wrote Tony’s autobiography, An Autobiography of the Master Drummer of Afrobeat. In the book, he elegantly summarises that Allen cultivated “independent coordination” across the drum set. By the late 1960s, he says that Allen had integrated the jazz drummer’s steady offbeat hi-hat into Afrobeat, maintaining a continuous shimmer in counterpoint to his other limbs. This freed him to weave polyrhythms of dazzling subtlety: “a light, jazzy touch on the instrument, a very polyrhythmic concept of groove, and an arsenal of subtle inflexions”, as Veal describes it. Tony wasn’t interested in flashy solos for their own sake; “virtuosic displays” were shunned in favour of “dynamic flow, propulsion and ongoing conversation” with the band. Like a great boxer, Veal writes, Allen knew exactly “when to jab with his bass drum… when to lay deeply into the groove and when to break and restart that tension” with a crackling snare accent. This conversational drumming created an ecstatic alliance in concert with Fela Kuti’s band.

Former Fela Kuti keyboardist Dele Sosimi believes Allen’s jazz-honed freedom meant that in Fela’s classic 1970s recordings, there is a live dialogue between drums and band: “There was a synergy… communication,” Sosimi explains, like a jazz drummer responding to a soloist in real time. After Tony left Fela’s band in 1979, Sosimi witnessed a stark change. Fela, unable to find a true replacement, told subsequent drummers to play a basic pattern: “He… preferred that monotony of groove. No improvisation like when Tony was there.” The comparison between the pre-1980 Fela records and the later ones is telling. “There is no comparison,” Sosimi says flatly. “You can tell that, oh, there’s a void.”

Veal’s research echoes this: Tony’s drum parts were the only ones not pre-written by Fela, and after he quit, all Fela’s drummers merely copied Tony’s 1970s patterns as best they could. Yet Tony Allen was never one to be pigeonholed or to rest on old laurels. Veal notes that Tony, a nonconformist by nature, possessed the “clarity, inner strength and ingenuity” to reinvent himself outside Fela’s shadow. As singer-guitarist Keziah Jones points out, Tony “deserved to be known in his own right” – not just as Fela’s drummer – and by the 2000s, that had come true. Allen became a globe-trotting bandleader and collaborator, delving into jazz, funk, electronica, pop and beyond. “He found a way after working with Fela to create something,” Jones says. “That style became copied all over the world”. Crucially, Tony modernised traditional rhythms without losing their roots. Both Jones and Wade highlight Allen’s heritage in Yoruba and Ghanaian music – highlife, apala, percussion traditions – which he transmuted onto the drum kit. “He managed to take this very traditional localised style, transform it into a modern format, and then use it to play other genres all over the world – I think that was brilliant,” Jones reflects.

Alune Wade adds that Tony created a unique hybrid of West African groove: a blend of Nigerian Afrobeat and Ghanaian highlife, underpinned by jazz sensibility. In technical terms, Veal calls Allen’s sound “a jazz- and funk-inflected rearticulation” of Nigerian rhythms. In human terms, it was simply Tony’s voice, instantly recognisable and endlessly adaptable.

Even in his final years, Tony Allen was restlessly creative and deeply sought-after. “Tony keeps on living, beyond the grave”, Nick Gold tells me. Allen toured and recorded right up to the threshold of 80, mentoring younger artists along the way. “One of the gifts he gave us is [that] he stayed,” Gold says. “Many musical innovators die young, but Tony lived to quite an age… to collaborate with people and for people to work with him and become influenced by him.” By the late 2010s, a new generation had caught the Allen bug. London jazz-funk outfit Ezra Collective brought him on stage; hip-hop producers name-checked him. “He was very generous in who he would play with,” Gold recalls.

At the same time, Tony guarded his artistic identity. He wouldn’t let anyone pigeonhole him as just a ‘funk’ or ‘jazz’ drummer for hire – if asked to play something that didn’t feel authentic, “he would get quite irritable about it.” As Gold puts it, “He wasn’t a fashion player.” Tony knew his worth. “He knew he’d created something beautiful… If you respected it, you got something out of it,” Gold says. And on a more personal note: “He was just a very sweet, lovely, funny, generous man. But he swore a lot,” Gold adds with a chuckle, a reminder that behind the beatific groove guru was a down-to-earth Nigerian uncle who wouldn’t hesitate to drop an F-bomb.

When Tony Allen died, the outpouring of love across the globe was immediate and immense. Eric Trosset, Tony’s long-time manager, producer and friend, recalls being astonished at the tributes from every corner. The day of his death brought “des réactions incroyables” from all over: Coldplay, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, articles as far afield as the Bombay Times, South Africa, New Zealand. Many who had never heard of Tony Allen suddenly learned who he was. Why did his passing strike a chord even with strangers? Trosset muses: “Tony exuded a certain humanity and simplicity that people sensed.” We’re sitting in Trosset’s office in northern Paris, the walls and shelves laden with music memorabilia. On the wall just above the record player, there’s a poster of the album cover for The Source. The photo says everything: Allen is lounging on a sofa, swathed in smoke. His hat is tilted, his face in the shade, a man simultaneously present and already part legend. Behind him, the glow of a vintage standing lamp diffuses a warm ochre light. To Trosset, this photo is more than a souvenir. It’s a portal. “He’s still here,” Eric murmurs. “Everywhere. And his legacy keeps spreading.”

In those grieving days of May 2020, artists around the world felt they’d lost one of their own – a true collaborator in spirit, even if they’d never met him. Fortunately, Allen had set in motion a trove of musical projects that would surface almost immediately after his death, each a fresh context for his ever-flexible beat. Within weeks came Rejoice, his long-awaited duets album with South African trumpet legend Hugh Masekela, which they had recorded a decade earlier. By autumn, Damon Albarn’s band Gorillaz released ‘How Far?’, a track Allen had jammed on just one month before passing, featuring UK rapper Skepta riding the drummer’s Afro-groove. These were harbingers of a remarkable posthumous blooming.

In May 2021, Blue Note Records released There is No End, the album Tony had most passionately worked toward in his final months. The title could not have been more apt. A bold foray into contemporary hip-hop and spoken word, There is No End was Allen’s message that his groove would keep evolving even in his absence – that rhythm has no terminus. Vincent Taeger, the album’s co-producer, remembers Tony’s excitement about spotlighting emerging rappers. Despite pushing 80, Allen insisted on dialoguing with young MCs. “Incredible… He was totally in his element working with 20-year-old rappers,” Taeger says, a trace of awe in his voice. Crucially, Tony didn’t choose big names to boost his cred: “He couldn’t care less whether these guys were famous or not.” This was no legacy vanity project; it was the natural extension of Allen’s curiosity. He gave Taeger free rein to recruit talented voices, whether or not they had hype. The resulting roster (which includes Sampa The Great, ZelooperZ and Danny Brown, alongside a cameo from Skepta) is eclectic and fresh. “He wasn’t doing it to ‘look cool’ or imagine himself younger”, Taeger emphasises. Tony genuinely wanted to dialogue with the new generation – to learn as much as to teach. As Taeger recalls, Allen had been planning a more experimental, produced sound for this album, blending live drums with drum machines and effects. “In fact, he had already laid down all his drum tracks and approved the beats before departing. There is No End is truly his creation – not a post-mortem remix project but the album Tony himself envisioned.”

“People are going to try to hear every little thing [he made]”, said Anthony Joseph shortly after releasing ‘Tony’, a personal homage to the drummer from his latest album, Rowing Up River to Get Our Names Back. Joseph compares Allen’s posthumous output to the legacy of icons like Hendrix or Prince. “I still listen to it because it’s still Tony Allen.”

Eric Trosset says these posthumous projects weren’t random. “Tony had an idea to put his beat everywhere,” he says. “With pop, with techno, with poetry. He was planting seeds.” It’s why so many artists who worked with him have kept him close. Mélanie Chédeville, whose dreamy Cri d’Amour features Allen’s omnipresent patterns, remembers his tact and generosity. “He listened first. Then played just what the song needed. When he died, I couldn’t work for a year. It was like the air had changed.” Her release with Tony, which appeared over a year after his death, was not just a musical offering but a form of healing. “He caressed his instrument like it was a person. In the studio”, she continues, “he brought a silence that wasn’t absence but attention.” His drumming was so attuned to her voice that it felt like whispers exchanged between close friends. The grief of losing him halted Chédeville’s creativity, but the act of releasing that album became a way of letting his presence return. “It was like he was still playing in the room,” she tells me.

In 2023, it was the turn of Los Angeles-based label Jazz Is Dead to dip into Allen’s well of patterns and riffs with Tony Allen JID018, a collection of silky Afro-jazz-funk instrumentals that Allen had jammed with producer Adrian Younge in 2018. Even in these largely instrumental tracks, Tony’s drumming is unmistakable. Jazz critics noted the deep swing and effortless complexity of Allen’s touch, further solidifying his stature among the jazz greats (“the Max Roach of Lagos”, as Dele Sosimi puts it in our discussion from his London home). On another continent, an unlikely project was finally seeing daylight in Paris: Yannis & The Yaw. This collaboration with Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis was born from two days of jamming in 2016, capturing Tony in conversation with rock and electronic musicians half his age. Life and a pandemic intervened, but Yannis was determined to complete the work “in Allen’s honour”. Eight years later, the Lagos Paris London EP was released via Transgressive Records – yet another hybrid release, defying category. Philippakis described combing through Tony’s last drum takes as a moving experience. “There’s an eternal quality to these drum tracks, and you feel a continuity of his life and energy through them,” Yannis told Under the Radar. “He wanted people to hear this… it’s good to be able to do it for him – though of course it’s slightly bittersweet.” The EP’s very name, linking Lagos, Paris and London, hints at the cosmopolitan orbit of Allen’s later life, and the far-flung community he fostered.

The Afrobeat maestro’s presence has also coursed into spoken word and jazz-poetry realm. Last year, The Last Poets, sometimes known as ‘the godfathers of hip-hop’, released Africanism, built around drum patterns Tony recorded at Prince Fatty’s Brighton studio. Abiodun Oyewole of the Poets first met Tony after a performance of the Fela! musical on Broadway, when they talked about revitalising The Last Poets’ old material. “I looked at it as putting old wine in new bottles and dressing it up”, says Oyewole, who saw Allen’s involvement in what became Africanism as part of a global need to fight inhumanity. “Tony [is] a part of trying to make that change by using us and recording stuff [to] bring about change today,” he reflects. “He had a real heart and soul. And before he left us, he left me a kernel, something which grew for a couple of years, setting off something we never imagined when he died.”

A community is not built overnight; Allen spent decades sowing those seeds. Damon Albarn, who formed two bands with the drummer (The Good, The Bad & The Queen and Rocket Juice & The Moon), often speaks of Tony as a mentor. “He changed my life… it transformed me,” Albarn told British musician and producer Mark Ronson, recounting how playing with Tony taught him to “truly play with my ears”, to listen deeply, the way Allen himself did. From Lagos to London, Damon and Tony’s friendship was rooted in mutual respect and playfulness. When Albarn curated Africa Express shows or cross-cultural jams, Tony was his ace, the unflappable anchor who could make any ensemble gel. “If Tony Allen’s there, you’re not going to argue”, Albarn once joked. “When it comes to the rhythm, I will defer to him.” That sentiment was shared by Brian Eno (who called Allen “perhaps the greatest drummer who has ever lived”) and countless others who sought Tony out. From American indie singer Joan as Police Woman and Austrian vocalist Dave Okumu, whose collaborative 2021 album The Solution is Restless was built around Allen’s twilight grooves, to the Colombian band La BOA, who in 2025 released a fiery Afrobeat tribute recorded with Allen’s drums, artists across genres continue to rally around his beat. In the introduction to Allen’s autobiography, Veal reflects, “After more than a half century behind the drums, he is still providing a funky pulse that helps us make sense of our worlds.”

Little did Veal know that that pulse would continue well beyond Tony Allen’s lifetime. Five years on, his presence is felt everywhere, not as a nostalgic echo, but as a living, breathing influence in new music. Young drummers like Ezra Collective’s Femi Koleoso still explore his deceptively simple hi-hat patterns, while veteran singers cherish the memory of his ‘chiselled’ beats. Each new posthumous collaboration, each unearthed recording, is like receiving encouraging advice from an old friend, or a gentle nudge on the shoulder from a master who always played for the music, not for ego. As Abiodun Oyewole points out, Allen understood the “power of music and how it motivates people to make changes… he is definitely a revolutionary musician.” Yet his revolution wasn’t loud and violent. He was soft-spoken in life, almost shy – but give him a drum kit, and he could roar or whisper as needed. “If you have an instrument, let that be your loudest voice,” Oyewole says, thinking of Tony. “Do your thing, man. Let your art shine.”