Skip to main content
Read page text
page 22
Two legends of African music – Hugh Masekela and Tony Allen – first met nearly half a century ago, but their music is only just seeing the light of day, two years after the trumpet player’s death. Nigel Williamson finds out what took them so long “ Why did it take so long for us to get together and do it? I don’t know,” Tony Allen says of his splendid but much delayed collaborative album with the late, great Hugh Masekela – a r ecord that, one way or another, has taken almost half a century from conception to completion. “You can’t make the sun rise when it isn’t morning,” he reasons in his deep, quiet voice. “But when the time comes it will happen.” Bear with me, because the story behind Rejoice, the album Allen and Masekela talked about making for decades, is a complicated and convoluted one. The good news – as you can read in Robin Denselow’s five-star review of the album last issue – is that the music is glorious and more than worth the long wait. “I just wish Hugh was still around to hear how it turned out,” Allen adds poignantly. When Tony Allen and Hugh Masekela first met some 47 years ago, both were still in their early 30s but were already giants of African music in their different fields. After being forced into exile by South Africa’s apartheid regime in the 1960s, Masekela found pop success in the US where he had a No 1 with ‘Grazing in the Grass’ and went on to become the foremost ambassador of black South African music, his jazzy trumpet playing instantly recognisable for its burnished sound and indestructible groove. As the drummer and director of Fela Kuti’s Africa 70, the Nigerian-born Allen co-invented and powered the mighty sound of Afrobeat. Influenced by the rhythms of highlife and by American jazz drummers such as Max Roach and Art Blakey, he spent 15 years playing with Fela between 1964 and 1979, during which time they recorded more than 30 albums together. Even Fela – not a man given to modesty – conceded that “without Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat.” When I catch up with the 79-year-old Allen, he’s in London on a day trip via Eurostar from Paris, where he has made his home for the last 35 years. “I first got to know Hugh in Nigeria in 1973,” he says. “He was passing through, hanging out at Fela’s place and we all played together.” They renewed acquaintance four years later when Masekela was in Lagos for FESTAC 77 festival, a month-long festival of black and African arts and culture. “While he was in town Hugh tried to arrange some recordings with us but with all the problems Fela was having with the military government it never happened,” Allen recalls. Shortly after Masekela left, soldiers attacked and burned down 22 SONGLINES › ISSUE 157 WWW.SONGLINES.CO.UK
page 23
TONY ALLEN & HUGH MASEKELA “Hugh had a special way of playing... The more I heard him, the more I wanted to record with him” H u g o G l e n d i n n i n g & G a v i n R o d g e r s Fela’s commune and his elderly mother was thrown from a window, causing fatal injuries. Allen decided it was time to get out and left Fela in 1979 to start his own band. Masekela, meanwhile paid tribute to Fela and Allen’s Afrobeat with a majestic cover of Africa 70’s ‘Lady’ that only made Allen more convinced that they were destined to work together. “Hugh had a special way of playing,” he says. “Nobody sounds like him. He was mixing swing and modern jazz with South African melodies and it was a unique sound. The more I heard him, the more I wanted to record with him.” By 1984, Allen was living in London and Masekela was also around. “I proposed doing something together,” Allen says. “Same story. It didn’t happen because we were both doing our own thing. But every time our paths crossed at festivals around the world we would talk about it. Eventually we were in the same place at the same time. It just happened to be a couple of decades later.” To be strictly accurate, it was more than a quarter of a century later – and it took the timely intervention of World Circuit label owner Nick Gold to make it happen. Fast forward to 2010. Allen is recording his solo album Secret Agent for World Circuit, which Gold is producing, at Livingston Studios in North London. He casually mentions that he and Masekela have been discussing making an album together for decades. Not surprisingly, Gold jumps at the idea of a summit meeting between two of the most revered WWW.SONGLINES.CO.UK ISSUE 157 › SONGLINES 23

Page Text

View plaintext

TONY ALLEN & HUGH MASEKELA

“Hugh had a special way of playing... The more I heard him, the more I wanted to record with him”

H u g o

G l e n d i n n i n g

&

G a v i n

R o d g e r s

Fela’s commune and his elderly mother was thrown from a window, causing fatal injuries. Allen decided it was time to get out and left Fela in 1979 to start his own band.

Masekela, meanwhile paid tribute to Fela and Allen’s Afrobeat with a majestic cover of Africa 70’s ‘Lady’ that only made Allen more convinced that they were destined to work together. “Hugh had a special way of playing,” he says. “Nobody sounds like him. He was mixing swing and modern jazz with South African melodies and it was a unique sound. The more I heard him, the more I wanted to record with him.”

By 1984, Allen was living in London and Masekela was also around. “I proposed doing something together,” Allen says. “Same story. It didn’t happen because we were both doing our own thing. But every time our paths crossed at festivals around the world we would talk about it. Eventually we were in the same place at the same time. It just happened to be a couple of decades later.”

To be strictly accurate, it was more than a quarter of a century later – and it took the timely intervention of World Circuit label owner Nick Gold to make it happen.

Fast forward to 2010. Allen is recording his solo album Secret Agent for World Circuit, which Gold is producing, at Livingston Studios in North London. He casually mentions that he and Masekela have been discussing making an album together for decades. Not surprisingly, Gold jumps at the idea of a summit meeting between two of the most revered

WWW.SONGLINES.CO.UK

ISSUE 157 › SONGLINES 23

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content