Tony Allen, a celebrated innovator of the Afrobeat genre, died on Thursday (April 30) in Paris. He was 79 years old. Allen's cause of death is not known at the time of publication. “We don’t know the exact cause of death,” his manager Eric Trosset told France 24. “He was in great shape; it was quite sudden.
I spoke to him at 1:00 pm, then two hours later he was sick and taken to Pompidou hospital where he died.” The legend served as the drummer and musical director of Fela Kuti's band Africa '70 in the 1960s and 1970s.
While in the band, he participated in iconic Afrobeat albums such as 1973’s Gentleman, 1975’s Expensive Shit and 1976’s Zombie. “There was no band like the Africa 70,” Fela’s son Femi Kuti once told Rolling Stone. “And there
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