So this is a poem for Tony Allen
— a praise poem, a plea for peace —
as if the band were swinging and singing the same hymn
We be too, we be too, we be too
— impertinent.Anthony Joseph from the lyrics to ‘Tony’
Track of the Week
A tribute to the Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen (1940-20) by the great British Trinidadian poet Anthony Joseph is our track of the week this week.
Featuring a who’s who of top UK players with, at the kit in the hotseat Richard Spaven – known for his work with José James – taking on the mantle of the Afrobeat guiding light and innovator, Allen.
It’s The Invisible guitarist Dave Okumu who co-wrote and produced the number among the personnel.
A lead-off track from Anthony Joseph’s Rowing Up River To Get Our Names Back
A groove track on one level with plenty of space for jazz paraphrase and stylistic amplification within the idiom, but a story above all, a personal narrative based on Joseph’s personal rapport and encounters with Allen down the years ‘Tony’ introduces a whole new album for 2025 from Joseph whose The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running for Their Lives was a big highlight of 2021.
The Sun Ra and Art Ensemble of Chicago loving Sonnets for Albert T.S. Eliot prize winning author’s new album is entitled Rowing Up River To Get Our Names Back and is to be issued in February by Joseph’s long time label, the French indie Heavenly Sweetness.
The phrase in the album title is found in a fragment of the lyrics of ‘Tony.’
Completing the track personnel are Aviram Barath on Fender Rhodes and Moog, the great singer Eska Mtungwazi – whose debut album in 2015 was nominated for a Mercury – on background vocals and responsible for the vocal arrangement; and also here are Byron Wallen on trumpet whose signature Woody Shaw inspired sound flutters all over the middle part of a piece that clocks in at more than 9 minutes long. On trombone is James Wade Sired, a player we were impressed by a lot at a Cleveland Watkiss Great Jamaican Songbook concert on the South Bank some years ago.
And last but not least on ‘Tony’ there’s the free-player saxist Colin Webster who Joseph goes back a long time with and who is on for us one of Joseph’s greatest songs back in Spasm Band days 2011’s ‘She is the Sea.’
Joseph wrote the poem during a first listen to the Dave Okumu demo
Anthony says on the Bandcamp notes speaking of his reaction when Okumu sent the demo for the track over to him:
”I felt instantly, in the boom of the kick, the fluttering snare, that this was for Tony Allen. I wrote most of the poem during that first listen.”
From the Bandcamp notes
In the lyrics themselves Joseph talks about meeting Allen on the road many times and recalls a 2011 Fela themed night at a venue called La Bellevilloise in Paris when he got up on stage greeted by a smile from the Nigerian master: ”It was a militant soundtrack/for rowing up river/to get our names back./This is the ghost note/and the flam.”
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