National Geographic Music (National Geographic)

As drummer and sometime arranger/ music director for the great Africa 70 band, Tony Oladipo Allen was as instrumental in the creation of Afrobeat as Fela Kuti himself. From 1968 until 1979, Allen's dexterous drumming and impeccable rhythmic sensibility underpinned Fela's wild solo flights and musical jeremiads. When Allen left to pursue all full-time solo career in 1979, Fela's recordings suffered from the loss. Allen's work since then, both as a bandleader and sought-after collaborator, has continued to push Afrobeat relentlessly forward, embracing digital technology and hip-hop and establishing Allen as the music's true standard-bearer in the 21st century.

Born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1940, Allen took up the trap drums at the age of 18, while pursuing a career in radio. He soon began playing professionally, gigging around Lagos in an ever-shifting lineup of jazz and dance bands. He became friendly with Kuti – recently returned from London -- on this circuit and began playing with him in 1964. Kuti had led a jazz band in London called Koola Lobitos, which he had re-formed in Lagos to play a more Africanized version of the post-bop jazz of the era. But a 1969 trip to Los Angeles to record changed Fela and Koola Lobitos' entire musical outlook. Exposure to the incendiary black power politics of the Black Panthers, and the even more incendiary funk of James Brown radicalized Fela. When he returned to Nigeria, he rechristened his band Africa 70 and jettisoned jazz for a whole new sound that he dubbed "Afrobeat."

Allen, who was as affected by Koola Lobitos' Stateside odyssey as Fela, was instrumental in the development of Afrobeat. His translation of traditional Yoruba polyrhythms onto Western trap drums gave the music its unique punch. Africa 70 wasn't just a band aping American funk and R&B; they were making funk their own and re-inventing it in an African context and indigenous flavors. Allen had creativity to burn, too, releasing his first solo album, Jealousy in 1975, followed by Progress (1977) and No Accommodation For Lagos (1978). While these releases were all top-shelf Afrobeat productions, they lacked the charisma and fire that Fela brought to the music.

After his last show with Fela in Berlin in 1979, Allen continued to record in Nigeria, but after No Discrimination (1980) his situation in Nigeria became precarious, and Allen emigrated to London, where he became a much in-demand session musician. He released another solo effort in 1988 called N.E.P.A and then fell silent as a solo artist for an entire decade – relocating to Paris in the interim. In 1999 -- two years after Fela's untimely death from AIDS – Allen emerged from the wilderness with the critically acclaimed Black Voices, a tour de force of contemporary Afrobeat. He followed this with 2002's Home Cooking, an album that stripped Afrobeat down to it's essentials and re-tooled it for the 21st century, with the help of a talented young crew of Nigerian rappers living in London. His 2006 release, Lagos No Shaking further developed Allen's innovated new approach to the once-revolutionary sound that he helped pioneer. – Tom Pryor