TONY ALLEN SECRET AGENT

Friday 7th august 2009 21.o3 pm

listening to tony allen's latest 'cook up' Secret Agent'

Tony oladipo allen born of nigerian/ghananian parentage and co-creator of afrobeat and the man who put 'beat' in afrobeat.He was fela kuti's greatest drummer and band leader for about 20 years and played drums on fela's classic albums like zombie, jjd, kalakuta show, power show etc from the late 60's to late 70's when he left out of frustration and lack of recognition from fela.
When Dr T or Uncle T left the africa 70, legend has it that fela found it hard to replace him because tony allen sounded like four drummer playing different beats at once, the same legend has it that when James brown visited Lagos in the 70's members of the flames used to sit next to tony Allen and write down drum patterns and if you listen to early James brown records you would hear the tony Allen influence.

Tony Allen was the ONLY member of fela's band that was allowed to create his part of the music, fela basically wrote out parts for every body in the band and told them what to play and left uncle tony to just .... do his thing .Even Damon Albarn of BLUR fame paid homage to Tony Allen in one of their songs and has been a recent collaborator and even featured on Tony Allen's HOME COOKING cd which also featured TY the British/Nigerian rapper.
After he left fela's band in 1978( I think) he moved briefly to London but due to the usual visa problems he had to move to Paris,France where he lives till date.
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Now what can i say about SECRET AGENT? classic afrobeat or future afrobeat or a mix? mostly recorded in lagos nigeria to give it that authentic afrobeat feel with new singer/song writers like king odudu, ayo, wura samba, keefee, switch and tony Allen playing drums, precussions and vocals on the title track secret and elewon po.The drum part were programmed in Paris then taken to lagos and recorded, then brought back to paris and the programmed beat were basically erased and tony played all the drum part live.
For me Stand outs are ALUTERE ( which has a samba, highlife and afrobeat kinda of feel good groove)and not forgetting wura samba use of Yoruba proverbs and idioms. CELEBRATE featuring King ODUDU on vocal. then for new kids on the block SWITCH ,which had a modern feel to it(a poetry/rap kinda African thing) but all in all it's one for the collection.This album i highly recommend
Also worth checking out from Uncle Tony are HOME COOKING, LAGOS .. NO SHAKING .. LAGOS SHAKE A TONY ALLEN CHOP UP ..anthology of tony Allen which has all his earlier classics and playing with fela's africa 70 and produced by fela himself . like the late great fela anikulapo kuti would say ENOUGH TALK lets get down into the underground spiritual game.