Influential Nigerian drummer Tony Allen sadly passed away on April 30, 2020, at the age of 79. He was considered a pioneer of the Afrobeat genre for his work with Fela Kuti as the drummer and music director of Fela’s backing band Africa ’70.
After parting ways with Fela in 1979 he continued to be active in a variety of different projects. This included the supergroup The Good, the Bad & the Queen, which also featured Damon Albarn of Blur, Paul Simonon of The Clash and Simon Tong of The Verve.
He also collaborated with another one of Albarn’s projects, Gorillaz. He was featured on the track “How Far?” which was released posthumously on May 2.
The track also featured British MC Skepta. The song does include socially conscious verses such as “Love how you live, remember the world, full of expensive shit. Can’t forget the poor ’cause you’re friends with the rich.”
Along with being a commentary on materialism, “expensive shit” is most likely a call out to to the 1975 album of that name by Fela Kuti & The Africa 70. As a further tribute to Allen, the song also refers to “Zombie” another classic Afrobeat album released by the band in 1976.
On the track’s YouTube page, it includes the following quote from Allen “I want to take care of youngsters – they have messages and I want to bring them on my beat.”
RIP Tony Allen (August 12, 1940 – April 30, 2020)