“The truth is that Tony could keep better time than any drum machine, but his emigration to Europe coincided with the increasing mechanisation of dance music.” Allen’s biographer and some time musical collaborator Michael Veal traces the ever evolving work of the heart-steady Afrobeat drummer

Tony Allen talks about his and Fela Kuti’s early group Koola Lobitos, four-limbed drumming, the necessity of hi-hats to Afrobeat, his favourite jazz drummers, and how Black Panther Sandra Isidore politicised Fela. Interview by Francis Gooding, February 2016