Tony Allen's Seasick Sound

I'm on vacation and this is a rerun:



I’ve gotten addicted to Tony Allen’s seasick drumming; but I had to go back in time first, to Tony Allen’s Version of Time, which is outside of time; an idea about rhythm that sloshes back and forth between swing and straight, perpetually adrift and uncontainable.

It’s a rebellious feel and Tony Allen did rebellious things with it. When I say rebellious, I don’t mean he wore a controversial t-shirt on Saturday Night Live, or wouldn’t let HUMMER use one of his tracks in a commercial. I mean that the Nigerian percussion master was out of his mind with independence. First he helped let loose a whole new kind of music (a militant witchdoctor funk called Afrobeat designed to put your ass into a trance of dance and tap you into the communal ecstasy and out of the communal psychosis). And then, after sicking his groove on the Dark Continent, his band, Africa ’70, made its own compound and declared independence from the state.

I haven’t mentioned Fela Kuti yet, on purpose. Fela started Africa ’70 with Allen. Allen was musical director, but Fela wrote the tunes and gave the sound a face. Kuti’s name became the brand name forever stapled onto “Afrobeat” in the histories, while Allen’s became a footnote. But Afrobeat was nothing if not politics through rhythm and if Fela supplied the polemic, Allen’s eternal groove gave it its conduit.



Madness is a reoccurring theme in African legends and Fela’s pan-African fervor definitely blossomed into something approaching mania. When he tried to use concert proceeds to fund his presidential campaign, a lot of his band bolted, feeling he had crossed the line from muso-political to just political. Allen knew the difference, and which one he was qualified in, and left as well, moving to Europe. After all, if he wasn’t going to let the Nigerian army push him around, why should he let Kuti?

Click here to read more and for mp3s.