This is brilliant. Tony Allen is releasing an album of Jazz Messenger tunes played in his own inimitable style. It’s fantastic. Listen on Spotify – Tony Allen tribute to Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers and watch this live show. Just bought a ticket to see the progenitor of Afrobeat drumming at the Jazz Cafe in September.
Having watched the whole Tony Allen Masterclass wot I posted about here yesterday, there are two beats drummers need to know and you’re OK with Afrobeat. The first one I wrote about in this post – joethedrummer.com/this-is-the-first-afrobeat-drum-groove-according-to-tony-allen/ So I’ll call this the second groove of Afrobeat. Play until you make them smooth with a crispy hi hat just like Tony does it. On the masterclass video you can watch it demonstrated here – https://youtu.be/zNru-AhcBwo?t=11m10s
Wow, this is brilliant, an hour long masterclass with Tony Allen giving loads of detail about his playing style and approach to music. Wonderful, wonderful. What a treat.
OK, I think it’s obvious by now that I’m really in to the drumming of Tony Allen and Afrobeat in general. When I got into Afrobeat, I looked for teaching materials to help me develop my Afrobeat chops. There weren’t many resources available so I had to start writing my own. Over the last couple of years I’ve managed to get a good sense of Tony Allen’s drumming and have been lucky enough to see Allen live on two occasions.… Read More »Afrobeat Drumming – Beats Of Tony Allen, Book Review
This is the final post of a four part series of exercises to help develop your coordination with Afrobeat drumming inspired by Tony Allen’s first Afrobeat groove.
If you haven’t seen them already, Check out part 1 and part 2. So let’s continue to develop our coordination with Tony Allen’s first groove of Afrobeat. Now that we can play a bunch of different ride and snare patterns, it’s time to do some work on the left foot. A unique aspect of Tony Allen’s style is the way he creates an interesting interaction between his hi-hat foot and his hi-hat hand patterns. I missed this facet of his… Read More »Developing Coordination With Afrobeat Drumming Pt. 3
I’ve been spending a fair amount of time working on my Afrobeat chops. I’ve been listening to a lot of Fela Kuti and his artistic descendants such as Antibalas and Abayomi Afrobeat Orquestra. I am slowly starting to grasp the complex style of Tony Allen’s drumming in particular and it’s a lot like developing jazz chops. Anyway, I wrote myself a sheet of exercises based on Tony Allen’s first groove of Afrobeat. There’s a bunch of tricky stuff I wanted… Read More »Developing Coordination With Afrobeat Drumming
This is the perfect opportunity to do one of those compilation type posts where I list a bunch of interesting things that have come to my awareness. Mark Kelso Recently I watched Adam Hay’s interview of a drummer named Mark Kelso, a very interesting bloke I never heard of. Suddenly Mark Kelso is all over the place. He’s has fantastic technique and great feel. His DVD is due out and the title alone makes me want to check it out… Read More »It’s Half Way Through January And I haven’t Blogged Anything In Yonks
Damon Albarn is a pretty lucky guy since his rock star status allows him to play with musicians of the calibre of Tony Allen. Having said that, he’s quite good at songwriting and Go Back from the album Film Of Life is really good. On the album version of the song is this intro which I just realised is absent from the radio version of the song which is available on Youtube. I guess it’s a good reason to get… Read More »Drum Intro For Tony Allen’s Go Back From His Latest Album
So last Thursday I got to see Tony Allen at a venue in London called the Village Underground. I was very excited to see him play since I have a bit of a drum infatuation with his incredibly funky and unique drumming. The set comprised the songs on his new album Film Of Life and I felt very glad to go and see the great musician’s left foot in action in real life, so to speak. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really… Read More »I Saw Tony Allen Play In London