With the very recent passing of Tony Allen, this set of recordings has special significance. He and South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela had been planning on making a record together for years and in 2010 this finally was about to become a reality. Producer Nick Gold got the two titans...
Tag Archives: Drummer
I will always remember Oghene Kologbo saying “Fela is the afro, Tony is the beat”. Last Thursday, on International Day of Jazz, the beat left us. But let us not forget, master never die! Looking back at Tony Allen‘s career is not possible in a one-hour podcast, we’d need 10...
On the 22nd of March we will sail off to the Mediterranean and far beyond, with Gaia Mobilij, Giuliano Osella and Quimbara. Gaia Mobilij is a musician born and bred in Italy. However, thanks to her perpetual wandering around the world, she explores the sounds of far away cultures including...
Albums like More Arriving are windows into the present. Their perspective on the here and now is so spot on and accurate that they sound like the best portrayal of the days we currently live in. After having listened to them, you feel the compulsion to delve further into their...
Don’t call him a drummer. Despite being one of the best on the music scene and still “setting the tempo” for generations of musicians who look at funk, jazz, beat (with the ‘afro’ prefix in front of them), Tony Allen doesn’t fully agree when you define him as a drummer....

Event Review: Africa Now @ OGR (Turin, Italy; Saturday 22nd September to Thursday 18th October 2018)
In recent years, Turin has gained quite a reputation in the music world for its electronic/dance-oriented scene, being the host city of Italy’s largest electronic music festival, Club to Club. Nevertheless, the city has much more to offer, with new upcoming events and festivals popping up year after year. One of them is...
The second most important city in Northern Italy, Turin is a place of hidden gems. One of them is a once-abandoned 18th-century railway repair building turned into a cultural hub: OGR (Officine Grandi Riparazioni). In less than a year, the majestic industrial building has become a central location of the...
Nate Smith brings us a blazing hot rhythm section with sax melodies that effortlessly weave throughout the compositions. Regardless of when you see Nate Smith and KINFOLK perform live, you are sure to be in a head-boppingly good mood by the end of the evening. The core idea behind Nate’s...
Known for being the man behind the beat in afrobeat, Tony Allen is considered the pioneer and professor of Nigerian drumming. The maestro of polyrhythms, he can sound like five different drummers playing in unison without even breaking a sweat, “after 45 minutes, I’m just warming up!” Allen drummed with...