The Arches presents

Tony Allen and guests

Fri 01 Oct 2010

7.30pm
£15 + bf

Book Tickets

Ticket and Meal Deal available: £23.95 for your ticket and a two-course meal in the Arches Cafe Bar & Restaurant before the show. Call 0141 565 1000 to book.

Starting out in 1960 as a jazz drummer, influenced by Art Blakey and Max Roach, Nigerian drummer, composer and songwriter Tony Allen is now known alongside Fela Kuti as one of first founders of Afrobeat, and as one of Africa's finest kit drummers - "perhaps", as Brian Eno once mused, "the greatest drummer who has ever lived".   

The drummer and musical director of Africa 70 with Kuti between 1968-79, he formed his own group in 1980. As well as recording with influential African artists such as Sunny Ade, Ray Lema and Manu Dibango, he experimented across different genres, fusing the Afrobeat sound with electronica, dub, RnB and rap to create what he christened as 'afrofunk'.

As a live performer, his gentle presence behind the kit seems to preclude the sound he produces; a subtle, elegant, poised cacophony of rhythms and styles. His influence similarly continues to cross boundaries - musically, but also geographically and politically. As well as working with Jarvis Cocker, Air and Charlotte Gainsbourg, he drummed on Sebastian Tellier's Politics in 2004 - including the stunning La Ritournelle - and on Damon Albarn's The Good, The Bad and The Queen album in 2007. The final refrain of Blur's Music Is My Radar in 2000 sums it up perfectly, as Albarn's unmistakably British cockney tones tell us: "Tony Allen got me dancing"... 

www.tony-allen.com

18+