Drummer Tony Allen, driver of Afrobeat sound, dies at 79
Associated Press | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 6 years AGO
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Pioneering drummer Tony Allen, the driver of the Afrobeat sound, has died in Paris at age 79.
Allen died Thursday night at the Pompidou Hospital of an aortic aneurysm, his manager Eric Trosset confirmed to The Associated Press.
In an influential career that spanned decades and continents, Allen started drumming in Nigeria's Lagos in the 1960s and formed a partnership with Fela Kuti, composer, singer, bandleader and saxophonist. They are credited with launching the catchy Afrobeat dance music featuring prominent guitars, complex brass harmonies and poly-rhythmic drumming.
With a prolific output throughout the 1970s, Allen and Kuti gained sales and fame throughout Africa, Europe and North America.
Kuti's outspoken criticism of corruption and human rights abuses got him and his band into repeated trouble with Nigerian authorities and in 1978 Allen left to concentrate on his own music.
He collaborated with many of the world's top musicians including Brian Eno, Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorrillaz, Paul Simonon of the Clash and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
This year Allen released Rejoice, a CD of music he created with late South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela.
ARTICLES BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hong Kong police arrest 4 from university student union
HONG KONG (AP) — Four members of a Hong Kong university student union were arrested Wednesday for allegedly advocating terrorism by paying tribute to a person who stabbed a police officer and then killed himself, police said.
For South Sudan mothers, COVID-19 shook a fragile foundation
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Paska Itwari Beda knows hunger all too well. The young mother of five children — all of them under age 10 — sometimes survives on one bowl of porridge a day, and her entire family is lucky to scrape together a single daily meal, even with much of the money Beda makes cleaning offices going toward food. She goes to bed hungry in hopes her children won’t have to work or beg like many others in South Sudan, a country only a decade old and already ripped apart by civil war.
For South Sudan mothers, COVID-19 shook a fragile foundation
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Paska Itwari Beda knows hunger all too well. The young mother of five children — all of them under age 10 — sometimes survives on one bowl of porridge a day, and her entire family is lucky to scrape together a single daily meal, even with much of the money Beda makes cleaning offices going toward food. She goes to bed hungry in hopes her children won’t have to work or beg like many others in South Sudan, a country only a decade old and already ripped apart by civil war.