The cool jazz session is another building block from the legacy of the Afrobeat legend.
First of all: These eight tracks, which the drummer Tony Allen, who died in April 2020, recorded with Adrian Younge, are not the musical testament of the Afrobeat co-inventor, they were made in the summer of 2018. As is well known, there were further recordings after that, but they were already released posthumously: the piece “Cosmosis”, which Allen recorded live with the Nigerian poet Ben Okri, the Nigerian-British rapper Skepta and Damon Albarn played (it’s part of the compilation THERE IS NO END) and the album THE SOLUTION IS RESTLESS by Joan As Police Woman and Dave Okumu, on which Allen set the beat (and again featured Damon Albarn).
Here Tony Allen is joined by Jazz Is Dead founder and producer Adrian Younge (guitar, bass, organ, marimba), four saxophonists, two trumpeters, a trombonist, a flautist and three other percussionists – but the No. 18 release in the JID series still didn’t become a full-fledged orchestral album. Which is due to the dust-dry, somewhat undercooled session sound, which never gives Allen’s rebounding polyrhythms the big space.
In the track “Ebun” Allen seems to be playing back to the formative years with Fela Kuti in the big band Africa 70, playfully driving together with the wind sections – in the end you are still looking for the passion that shaped the drummer’s life’s work so much. Whether the album from the JID series will be followed by more farewell gifts from Allen could at best be revealed by a voice from heaven for beatmakers. Tony Allen’s music lives on in pop and jazz anyway.