Research Catalog

Title

Tony Allen : an autobiography of the master drummer of afrobeat / Tony Allen ; with Michael E. Veal.

Author

Allen, Tony, 1940-2020

Publication

Durham : Duke University Press, 2013.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Veal, Michael E., 1963-

Description

199 pages : illustrations; 23 cm

Summary

Tony Allen is the autobiography of legendary Nigerian drummer Tony Allen, the rhythmic engine of Fela Kuti's Afrobeat. Conversational, inviting, and packed with telling anecdotes, Allen's memoir is based on hundreds of hours of interviews with the musician and scholar Michael E. Veal. It spans Allen's early years and career playing highlife music in Lagos; his fifteen years with Fela, from 1964 until 1979; his struggles to form his own bands in Nigeria; and his emigration to France. Allen embraced the drum set, rather than African handheld drums, early in his career, when drum kits were relatively rare in Africa. His story conveys a love of his craft along with the specifics of his practice. It also provides invaluable firsthand accounts of the explosive creativity in postcolonial African music, and the personal and artistic dynamics in Fela's Koola Lobitos and Africa 70, two of the greatest bands to ever play African music.

Subjects

• Biographies
• Afrobeat > Biography
• Drummers (Musicians) > Nigeria > Biography
• Allen, Tony, 1940-2020

Genre/Form

Biographies

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Right in the center of Lagos -- Highlife time -- The sky was the limit -- God's own country -- Swinging like hell! -- Everything scatter -- Progress -- When one road close -- Paris blues -- No end to business.

ISBN

• 9780822355779 (cloth : alk. paper)
• 9780822355915 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2013013821

OCLC

842209197

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library