We've Landed

We've Landed (Matthew Herbert's Absence Dub Remix)

Born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1940, of mixed Nigerian and Ghanaian parentage, Tony Allen taught himself to play by listening to records made by the American jazz drummers Art Blakey and Max Roach. He began working as a professional musician in 1960, gigging around Lagos and variously playing highlife and jazz. Today living in Paris, Allen has long been acknowledged as Africa’s finest kit drummer and one of it's most influential musicians, the man who with Fela Anikulapo Kuti created Afrobeat - the hard driving, James Brown funk-infused, and politically engaged style which became such a dominant force in African music and whose influence continues to spread today.

Allen had to overcome strong parental opposition to realise his dream of
becoming a professional musician. “My parents were…not keen. Back then, in Lagos, musicians were more or less thought of as beggars, or worse. But I just put it in front of them. I was an electrical technician, but I wanted to make a change. My mother was never happy about it, but my father, who was an amateur musician, eventually agreed.”

Allen started out as a jazz drummer. “Art Blakey was my big influence, and before that, before I started club crawling, it was Gene Krupa. When I started, I tried to play like Gene Krupa. Then I discovered Blue Note Records and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers - it opened up another style to me. Max Roach was important too. I studied some lessons he wrote in Down Beat magazine about how to play high-hats. Most drummers in Lagos never used them, they were just a decoration on the kit,and I’d always thought that was something incomplete.”

World Circuit Records has made its reputation by producing some of the finest albums of the past three decades. The label’s prestigious roster includes the Grammy-winning Buena Vista Social Club and associated solo artists (including Ibrahim Ferrer, Rubén González, Omara Portuondo and Orlando ‘Cachaíto’ López), Malian blues pioneer and Grammy-winner Ali Farka Touré, Malian divas and social activists Oumou Sangaré and Fatoumata Diawara, master kora player Toumani Diabaté, the illustrious Orchestra Baobab, musical iconoclast Cheikh Lô, and Fela Kuti’s legendary drummer and co-creator of Afrobeat Tony Allen. 
 
With reissues and brand new releases coming soon, World Circuit continues to bring diverse, genre-defying music to a wider audience.