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Tony Allen: An Autobiography of the Master Drummer of Afrobeat . By Tony Allen with Michael E. Veal . Durham, NC and London : Duke University Press , 2013. 199 pp. ISBN 978-0-8223-5591-5
Reviews
The lack of informed discussion of the creative behaviours, motivations and intentions of popular music instrumentalists is perplexing in the light of the emergence of an influential school of thought emanating from the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (CMPCP) that seeks to re-centre the musician. Wanting to understand better the role of the performer, the Centre's Director, Professor John Rink, takes the view that 'the fact that we can speak of performance studies as an integral part of today's musicology is attributable to the development of a sizable international community of scholars, institutions to support their work, a large body of research, established modes of dissemination, shared beliefs and values, a common discourse, and a perceived identity'. In the brave new world that might now follow, Rink (2012) foresees that 'the immensely significant role of performers will be fully recognised by musicologists and thus will inform and shape their research'.
Further literature on and about popular music instrumental practitioners, in this case drummers, is therefore to be welcomed. Extant books by or about drummers have on occasion been less than informative; Ginette Baker on her father Ginger Baker's hell-raising, jazz-writer Leslie Gourse's biography of Art Blakey, Bruce Crowther's look at Gene Krupa, and singer Mel Tormé's inside take on Buddy Rich, to name but a few, have tended to dwell much on the anecdotal and circumstantial. Issues of creative behaviour, motivation and intention remain largely unexamined.
Where Tony Allen: An Autobiography of the Master Drummer of Afrobeat raises a bar that needed a certain amount of raising is in the deft contextualising of Allen's work by musician-academic and co-author Michael Veal. Veal is a saxophonist and Professor of Music and African American Studies at Yale University, and author of an earlier biography of Allen's long-time employer Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Positioning both books within the growing field of African cultural studies, Veal situates...