Few sounds transcend time and space quite like the driving pulse of Afrobeat, and few artists, for that matter, have defined
their own domains quite as profoundly as Tony Allen—the very beat of Afrobeat itself. In 2011, Allen recorded one of his
inimitable rhythmic dialogues as part of the Afrobeat Makers Series for the Parisian imprint Comet Records. Charged with
the same fervour for uninhibited expression that defined his trailblazing career, Tony Allen’s drumming, free from convention
and charting its own course, emanates a cadenced stream of consciousness that speaks its own truth.
If Allen’s language was his beat, then on this record, La BOA—La Bogotá Orquesta Afrobeat—becomes his latest and
most fitting interlocutor. What began as a tribute—a song named after Allen—now feels like the prelude to a deeper dialogue
in a meeting that seems more like fate than mere happenstance.
Led by producer Daniel Michel, the ever-evolving band has spent over ten years embodying the fluid, transformative spirit
of Afrobeat, imprinting it with their distinctly Colombian sensibilities. From Casa Mambo in Bogotá, Michel’s Mambo Negro
Records has become a cornerstone of Colombia’s underground scene championing Afro-Colombian and independent
music throughout that time.
Across this LP, Allen’s recordings lay down the canvas upon which La BOA paints its own vision of Afrobeat—raw and
expansive, locking step with his drum tracks while building around the unmistakable blueprint of their Colombian rhythms:
exuding Caribbean beat, rolling with Pacific groove, and, above all, shaped by the rarefied air of the Andean melting pot
that is Bogotá. What ensues is an enduring conversation that crosses eras, borders, even life and death—a celebration of
the passing of the baton and the boundless nature of Afrobeat as a genre that refuses to settle. Where the beat of Lagos
meets the brass of Bogotá, so too La BOA meets Tony Allen.