(AFP) – Tony Allen, legendary drummer, was working on it when he disappeared last year: here is “There is no end”, iconoclastic and hard-hitting album, like its author, which rubs shoulders with young people here rappers.
“When he left, it was very hard. A month later, his record company and his manager contacted me: + you had made good progress, you have to respect the will of the master and finish this album +”, tells l ‘AFP Vincent Taeger. Producer-accomplice, he has been working alongside this Afrobeat guru and Fela Kuti’s traveling companion for ten years.
As he was preparing to celebrate his 80th birthday, in particular with an event concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Nigerian drummer died on April 30, 2020 at the age of 79, in the Paris region, where he had settled.
Between his various collaborations – notably with Damon Albarn, whether within Gorillaz or The Good, the Bad and the Queen – Tony Allen had at the time embarked on an unexpected project.
“Tony wanted to make a rap album, he wanted rappers’ featurings, especially young people, boys and girls, but not with the same codes as usual”, as Vincent Taeger sums it up, himself a former drummer of the French group Poni Hoax.
– “Groove, party, dance” –
“Tony has always loved hip-hop – with Fela there was already the groove, the party, the dance all night long as in the first sound-systems of rap”, explains to AFP Eric Trosset, who was manager. Allen.
“He had already produced beats with Vincent since spring 2019 and finished + Cosmosis + in March 2020, the only title Tony had finished with a rapper,” he continues.
“Cosmosis”, already released as a single, confronts the rhythm and groove of Tony Allen with the stamps of the English rapper Skepta, of Nigerian origin, and the Nigerian novelist Ben Okri.
It’s just a sample, poetic inspiration and not necessarily representative of “There is no end” (“There is no end”), eclectic and effective, which comes out this Friday (at Blue Note).
“Rich Black”, with the starchy flow of the American Koreatown Oddity and makes big nods to club atmospheres, while “Très Magnifique” gives off a little perfume of Tom Waits, as Taeger says, with the grain of the rocky voice of the American Tsunami. And it is the Briton Lava La Rue who brilliantly takes up the challenge of the tempo-marathon imposed by Allen on “One Inna Million”.
– “A smuggler” –
Was it dizzying to finish the job without the chief architect? “I said to myself at the beginning, + shit Tony is no longer there, it will be very different +, because he obviously wanted to meet rappers all over the world for the recordings”, confides Vincent Taeger.
“But he trusted me, he knew that I had the same language as him”, underlines the one who calls himself Tiger Tigre for his solo projects. In order not to be alone faced with certain choices, Taeger called on Vincent Taurelle, another musician-researcher, Allen’s collaborator on “Film of life” or “The source”. “I needed another energy and Tony would have validated,” says Taeger.
“We managed to make an album that looks like Tony with the featurings of very good artists, not all known (except Skepta, editor’s note), which will be put forward, Tony was a smuggler”, welcomes Tiger again Tiger. The Kenyan Nah Eeto is illustrated on “Mau Mau”.
Tony Allen obviously wanted to bring this album to life on stage. Impossible mission ? “I thought about it, says Taeger. There are a lot of great drummers, like Quest Love (The Roots), Anderson. Paak (drummer and rapper), they knew him, they could do a few shows, to show the style of Tony “. “To finance all of this, why not launch a crowdfunding (crowdfunding)?”
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