Tony Allen is the original
funky drummer. As a member of Fela's '60s
highlife group Koola Lobitos,
Allen, Tony traveled with Fela to the U.S.,
where Fela developed Afrobeat.
Allen's complex, seemingly eight-armed and
eight-legged drum parts-an
encyclopedia of inventive groove spread over
dozens of albums-were the
only parts of Fela songs not composed by Fela
himself. .Allen released
an incredible series of solo albums in the
late-70s and early '80s,
three of which featured Fela and the Afrika 70.
Allen left Fela's band in
the early '80s; his first post-Fela album, the
beyond-essential No Discrimination,
featured on its title track this
pivotal, sensible lyric
of goodwill and good humor: "Black or white, we are
all from the same universe/...We
have plenty of things to do with each
other." With the help of
French label Comet Records, Mean spoke
tranatlantically with Tony
from his home in Paris on the eve of the
American release of his
extraordinary, don't-call-it-a-comeback late-nite
dance-funk album, Black
Voices.
Everybody's interested
in Afrobeat again. How come?
Tony Allen: Well...I'm wondering
too myself, you know. Wondering. What is
going on. These are things,
I've done them for years, back a long time ago.
I never changed my style,
y'know, just kept on playing Afrobeat all the
time. So maybe they just
decide to start listening to it now. I don't
know...
It's good to hear a live
drummer again on the dance floor.
[laughs] Yeah. On the dance
floor, yeah. You know, I like play dance music
all the time. I love playing
dance music. I play other things, but when it
comes to me, myself... I
don't have big band really, 'know? I already tried
big band before [in Europe],
but it never worked before because this place
is not like Africa, where
you have cheap labor and those other things, you
know. So this time around,
I'm playing with...it ranges from...it depends
on the project. From quartet
to quintet, sextet. But sometimes me myself, I
just play with DJs. I choose
the records and then we play like that. I just
know how to play music.
I've created something, the way of my playing. I
would want people to copy
it. That would give me more good feeling,
pleasure.
That's not so easy. Your
stuff is so complex-
I play like four drummers,
normally. [laughter]
Bootsy was telling me
about when the JB's visited Fela's club and saw you
all perform.
The musicians were always
with us every night when they finish their gig.
They end up in our own club.
They really had a good time there. But not
James Brown himself. He
never moved his ass to the club.
Ginger [Baker] said Fela's
musicians grew tired of the harassment by the
government that was the
result of Fela's provocative music and political
stands. Was that why
you left the group?
For me, a little bit of
that. I was tired of that. I just wanted to play
music and not have anybody
harass me just for doing nothing, you know. That
was a few times. But it
had to stop because I could not stand the bullshit.
I just take care. I just
want to play my music. And when it was getting too
tough, I just relaxed. It's
useless, for one month, we are fighting about
20 people at a time. It's
useless. And it's not 20 people talking about,
it's a whole government.
You know how many people make up the government
there. Cannot fight them.
Even when Fela was at
his most powerful, he still couldn't...
[That was] the main reason
why they didn't shoot. Be careful, you know.
They want to make sure that
not anything goes wrong because they afraid of
the weapon this guy has:
the music, and he has a microphone, and he has a
record. He was getting too
much for them...
Did you see Fela after
you left the band?
Oh yeah, yeah. We stayed
friends, although there sometimes there was
something like misunderstandings
between the journalists and me and he,
kind of like, misquotations
sometimes come from the journalist. We just
kept on going like that,
everything. Then when I am in Nigeria, I go to
his house, I go to his Shrine,
sit down, say, 'It's a nice day.' And when
he is here in Europe, he
always called me, 'I'm at the hotel.' The last
time I saw him, the last
concert was in '92, I was sit with him.