Jazz Articles about Tony Allen

Tony Allen: Black Voices

by Derrick A. Smith
June 1, 2000

Nigerian bandleader and Afro-Beat inventor Fela Kuti was legendarily self-assured. This ego manifested itself in his PR ploys, in his battles - sometimes physical - with the agents of the country’s military government, in his insistence on beginning a sax or keyboard solo seemingly unprepared, and in the fact that on most of his classic recordings he through-composed most of the interlocking segments of those monstrous compositions that liquidly combined traditional ideas of polyrhythm and layering with James Brown-ish funk ...