Zombie - a Tony Allen masterclass

Zombie was perhaps the finest single moment of Tony Allen, who passed away last Thursday.

I'll never forget the first time I heard "Zombie" in 2004. I was about to see Femi Kuti play at London's Barbican as part of the festival Black President: the Art and the Legacy of Fela Kuti, curated to celebrate his father's legacy. My date had stood me up at the 11th hour and I found myself on my own in the venue, having never heard of Fela Kuti; it was my date's idea but I was keen to go having visited South Africa the year before and fallen in love with African music. There was no support act (you don't support a Kuti!) but a short documentary instead played. The music that accompanied the opening was "Zombie" and I'll never forget it when the lights went down and those opening notes, the sax and first kick beat filled the auditorium:


Described by Brian Eno as "perhaps the greatest drummer who has ever lived", Tony Allen spent a lifetime playing the beat. As musical director, he formed Africa 70 in 1969 with his friend Fela Kuti before pursuing a solo career ten years later. By this point they had together put Lagos on the map, released a series of classic albums and created Afrobeat, a new music genre combining traditional and contemporary African music with western funk and jazz, and best understood on their classic tracks such as "Shakara", "Gentleman" and "No Agreement".

But it was "Zombie" that is perhaps their greatest recording. Starting with a few opening bars of light strumming, Fela then plays the catchiest and most powerful of saxophone licks, all the while underpinned by the most breathtaking of drumming from Tony Allen as he evokes a beat akin to the stop/start beat of a marching squad. It's a full 5 minutes before it slows down and one can catch a breath, before Fela starts to sing about his scathing views of the Nigerian military.
Chosen as the title track of their 1976 album Zombie, it became a smash hit and antagonised the authorities who responded with brute force. Further details of what unfolded can be found on the informative YouTube video above.

Tony Allen went on to create Afrofunk - a hybrid of Afrobeat, electronica, dub, R&B and rap - and work with other musicians from Africa as well as the western world including most recently Damon Albarn and his supergroup The Good, the Bad & the Queen. However it is "Zombie" that will remain with me the longest, a thrilling, powerful track and surely one of the funkiest, grooviest piece of music ever created.