Nigerian drummer Tony Allen, who created Afrobeat with Fela Kuti, dies in Paris aged 79, his manager says.
“We don’t know the exact cause of death,” Allen’s manager Eric Trosset told France 24. “He was in great shape; it was quite sudden. I spoke to him at 1:00 pm, then two hours later he was sick and taken to Pompidou hospital where he died.”
As a member of Kuti’s band Africa 70, Allen helped revolutionize the art of drumming, anchoring and propelling classic albums like 1973’s Gentleman, 1975’s Expensive Shit, and the Afrobeat legend’s most enduring work, 1976’s Zombie.
Each release depended on Allen’s slippery, ferocious, polyrhythmic grooves. “Without Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat,” Kuti once said. Damon Albarn and Brian Eno were also famously enamored with Allen’s playing; Eno called him “one of the great musicians of the 20th century — and the 21s
