For those unaware, Jazz Is Dead, the label co-founded by Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad that issues top-shelf recordings, will release Tony Allen Jazz Is Dead 18 on July 7th, 2023.

The genius that is Tony Allen departed this mortal world in April of 2020, but not without leaving an unmatched legacy that crossed oceans and borders, bridging cultures and forging a sound that changed music.

As the drummer for Fela Kuti’s revolutionary Africa 70, Allen’s polyrhythmic drumming defined Afrobeat, combining American jazz and Nigerian highlife to animate one of the most iconic performers of all time.

Over the course of Allen’s tenure with the group, and later as a solo artist, he would continue to relentlessly innovate, incorporating new sounds and working with scores of contemporaries. His contributions as an artist and cultural ambassador left an indelible impact on every genre of popular music, from techno to jazz to rock and hip-hop.

Allen’s music stands as an ongoing testament to the interconnected musical relationships and dialogues across the African diaspora, and their lasting influence on how we listen.

1. Edun
2. Where Trouble Wants to Go
3. Oladipo
4. Don’t Believe The Dancers
5. Makoku
6. Lagos
7. No Beginning
8. No End

This set from the Nigerian jazz and Afrobeat drumming legend, and one where only, perhaps, less than twenty minutes of music was laid down, the session ending, Allen moving on to the next city on his tour, and thus with no further sessions happening thereafter, opens on the Afrobeat-hued Edun and the ably textured Steady Tremble, and then we get brought forth the creatively adorned Oladipo and the upbeat, joyously funky Don’t Believe The Dancers.

Recorded at Linear Labs in Los Angeles in August 2018, along next is the magnificently cultured Makoku and that is then backed seamlessly by the rhythmically opulent Lagos, the album rounding out on the strategically-crafted No Beginning, coming to a close on the beautifully exulted, albeit repetitively looped, ironically entitled No End.

Speaking to the Tony Allen JID018 album release, Younge continues, First of all, to be able to work with somebody that helped pioneer the sound of a new genre, a genre that is kind of sort of an international style of funk, which is Afrobeat; it’s Black American music going back to it’s birthplace, Africa, Younge says.

Tony Allen represents that foundation. When I got the chance to work with this legend, I wanted to create an album that harkened back to the dawn of this music. This album focuses on early to mid-’70s African funk. I wanted to pull a lot of that out of Tony.

While Allen was in the studio, Younge asked the drummer to make random beats and sometimes Younge might say, get more crazy here. Like on Makoko, I wanted to do something that felt more like jazz and Afrobeat were coming together in a unique way, Younge adds. I asked myself, How would that sound? And that’s what we did there.

No End - Tony Allen & Adrian Younge [Official Audio]

Official Pre-Order Purchase Link