Afrobeat
Tony Allen playing four drummers' parts at once and never landing hard.
The pattern
2 bars, sixteenth notes. Loops until you stop it.
Nothing in this grid is louder than 96, which is the point. The kick opens the bar at 96 and 94 and then plays quieter hits off the beat, and the backbeat sits between 86 and 92 rather than up near 110 where the rest of the family puts it. Read the hat lane for the holes: bar one leaves five of its sixteen steps empty, the e of 1, the and of 2, the e of 3 and both of the last two sixteenths, and bar two leaves four empty in different places. The shekere fills the offbeat sixteenths underneath so the pulse survives. Allen's hi-hat opened by degrees under his foot rather than switching between two states, and this lane has only two states, so the single open hat per bar is a rounding of something continuous. Take it as a marker for where the foot lifted rather than as a literal transcription.
What it is
Tony Allen worked this beat out in Lagos in the late sixties by trying to get a highlife drummer, a jazz drummer and a set of Yoruba hand drummers onto one kit at the same time. Fela Kuti said afrobeat would not exist without him and was being accurate rather than generous. What makes it unlike American funk is the refusal to commit: no hit in the bar is decisively the biggest, the kick avoids beat one as often as it plays it, and the snare hovers around the backbeat instead of nailing it. The arrangements ran twenty minutes with the horns entering after eight, which only works because the groove never resolves and therefore never needs to.
What it sounds like
Loose and mid-forward. The kit is small, tuned high and recorded with few microphones, so the cymbals bleed everywhere and the whole thing arrives as one instrument. The snare is dry with the wires slack. Over it: a shekere hissing sixteenths, congas playing a two-bar figure, a tenor guitar picking one interlocking pattern while a second guitar plays another against it, an electric piano stabbing, and horns in unison. Bass stays low and repeats. Nothing is compressed hard and nothing is bright, so the top end belongs entirely to the hand percussion.
Key elements
- A kick that avoids the oneBeat one gets a hit, but a soft one, and the other kicks land off the beat. The bar refuses to declare a starting point, which is why it can run for twenty minutes.
- A hovering backbeatSnare on 2 and 4 at 86 to 92 rather than 110, with ghosts either side. It marks the beat without hammering it, and that is why the groove floats.
- Broken sixteenth hatsThe hat leaves gaps where a machine would put a hit, and moves those gaps between bars. Those absences are the part, not sloppiness.
- Shekere on the offbeatsA gourd shaker on the e and the a of every beat, ticking between 50 and 68, with one extra hit landing late in the second bar. It supplies the sixteenth grid that the hat keeps breaking.
- Interlocking guitarsTwo guitar parts written so their attacks never coincide. Play one, then write the second only in the gaps the first leaves.
How to get them
- KitSmall shells tuned high, no muffling, and only three or four microphones. Bleed between them is what glues the kit together, so close-mic'ing everything separately works against you.
- Hi-hatProgram sixteenths, then delete three or four of them per bar and delete different ones in the second bar. Keep velocities between 36 and 74 and never let two consecutive hits match.
- ShekereOffbeat sixteenths only, alternating around 52 and 62, panned slightly left with a conga answering slightly right. It should read as room noise until you mute it.
- GuitarsRecord the first part, then write the second against it on paper before you play it, marking every sixteenth the first one uses. Anywhere both parts hit together is a mistake to fix.
- ArrangementGive the groove four minutes before the horns arrive and do not change key. The length is structural: the pattern has to stop sounding like a pattern before the record starts working.
Reference points
Tony Allen, Fela Kuti, Africa 70, Egypt 80, Orlando Julius, and the reissue catalogues on Knitting Factory and Strut. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.
The pattern is a starting point rather than a rule. If you want the theory underneath why any of it works, Battuto measures it.