Our weeklong series Gateways – Tony Allen and Nigeria continues with something extraordinary. In the third piece about Allen following Thursday night’s live show (which you can watch all weekend) and Tim Jonze’s interview with the great man, you can watch him sit down with one of the UK’s finest young drummers, Moses Boyd, and share his knowledge, beats and techniques.
Really, there’s no one better to do that. As Allen explained in his Guardian interview, he’s firmly of the belief that there should be classes to teach drummers how to play Afrobeat – and he is the only person qualified to teach such a class. “I do my masterclasses with drummers and they are still fighting it,” he told us. “What I see in many drummers is that they are riding a bicycle with one leg.”
Boyd was the winner of the 2015 Mobo award for best jazz act. He has worked with a long list of great musicians including Lonnie Liston Smith, Zara McFarlane, Jimmy Napes and Soweto Kinch, as well as leading his own outfits the Exodus and Solo Exodus. He’s also someone who has explored the percussion of west Africa, having performed with Binker Golding on improvisations exploring jazz, blues, west African music and ritual music.
He’s someone who’s as committed as Allen to his art. “By the time I was 14 years old, I was spending all my school breaks in the music block practising,” he said in 2014. “I was doing no socialising whatsoever! Drums were my priority. But it was not being ‘flashy’ that was important to me. No, even at that age I was getting into Steve Gadd, Vinnie Colaiuta; even John Bonham! This was serious study.”
Watch and learn.
- You can follow Gateways both here and at boilerroom.tv