I just got a copy of Paul Simon’s DVD Graceland: the African Concert
Let me say at the outset that I love the Graceland album. I’m a big fan of African Music and South African music is amongst my favourites. I still think that Graceland is one of the most successful outsider/African fusion albums—much better than the Baka Beyond albums for example. Of course, a lot of African music is fusion already—African musicians are rarely purists and will play or incorporate anything from Beatles and soul music to jazz, country, techno, gospel, blues or Cuban with a surprising readiness. But Graceland really works for me and also for numerous African friends.
I’d heard that the DVD was amazing. Not Simon, who was reported to be disappointing, but the band and the African guests who didn’t play on the album: Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela.
The reports were accurate, at least on a first viewing. Get this DVD and let the band blow you away. Savour the fact that the multi-racial audience in Harare and the performers themselves couldn’t have known just how close they were to a free South Africa.
But Simon’s performance was very strange. Mostly he was lifeless, sorta just going through the motions except on a beautiful duet with Makeba on Under African Skies and perhaps one or two other songs in which the words and music go together well. But what was really obvious to me was just how wildy off Simon’s lyrics were when you view the concert as an African occasion. (I’d always heard the album as pretty much a blend of two styles that had no right to mix well but somehow did.) Here is a guy singing about lasers in the jungle and neurotic New Yorkers at Manhattan parties while Makeba and Masekela are singing very directly about the struggle for freedom and recognition in their homeland. I sort of expected Woody Allen (pretending to be Art Garfunkel) to come out to sing a number just for balance.
The audience had a great time and it is a great concert. Don’t be put off by my reservations.
Has anyone else seen this concert? What do you think of it?
I rented the video of the Graceland concert a few years back to see and hear the whistle solo from the You Can Be My Body Guard song. Unfortunatly the solo on the video was played by the sax player, no whistle at all on the entire video.
I like the “Graceland” album. S&G were my heros for a long time, but I would agree tha PS has been disappointing in his old age. Thanks for the review.
I’ve got a feeling that the original 1939 version of that song (not by LBM, of course) is on a compilation album that also contains some kwela. I’ll check it out if you (or anyone else) are interested.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo feature in this DVD and are their usual incredible self.
I can’t stand Paul Simon anyway so I am not surprised. I have never understood his post-with-Garfunkel appeal. That collaboration made for some decent songs, just like Lennon kept McCartney from getting so sappy. I think he’s really odd and weird but I am in a definite minority with this opinion. It also bugs me when you need some Westerner to introduce you to great music from around the globe, like Simon with the Africans and Sting with the Brazilians. I never understood what he was doing onstage with those fellers, frankly. In a very dark interpretation, it was like he was the white master indulging himself with the natives in that Diamonds in Shoes song. And, at the same time, giving himself a metaphoric vampire-like injection of new musical energy into his own songwriting and performing because he had run dry and needed something real.
Ultimately, its good for the musicians themselves from those places for exposure but I don’t need the intro from him, thanks. In fairness,though , its much more anonymous Westerners who run record stores, host radio stations etc. that ultimately give us the chance to hear new stuff so perhaps, its just a different way of spreading the good musical news.
I know I have sullied an icon, so flame away at this bilious rant.
No, I can see your point Weekenders. I didn’t realize what he was up to for a long time until I saw people accusing him of fusing into other styles of music for his own benefit. BTW, the different groups, in responding to that accusation, said they didn’t care if they were being used…it was good for them too. One of his last albums was a failure though, that new agey one. I can’t think of the name of it.
No worries Weeks. I was hoping someone would raise these issues. I wasn’t trolling of course, I mainly wanted people to know about a DVD featuring a great band.
It’s probably obvious that I didn’t need Paul Simon to introduce me to African music. I was introduced by African friends when I was a student in the mid 70s. But how many people get to share a house with a South African, a Ghanan and a Zimbabwean amongst many others? How does the news get out? It would be hopeless to expect it to happen in the way news of blues and jazz got out becasue they were American musics and white Americans made it their business to collect and disseminate it beyond the black communities in which it was initially popular.
With blues and jazz stopping to evolve in the 70s, my guess is that world music was the only place for people who like roots music to go. Also, as this site testifies, a lot of us have discovered (if we didn’t already know) that our own heritage contains some seriously interesting stuff. But this process of discovery is slow, the majors and distributers are actively discouraging it and few radio and TV folks support it. many African musicians complain about eh label ‘world music’. As Papa Wembe said, we’re not a niche, not a passing fad, we’re a whole continent. Of course, he’s right. Still, I don’t sympathise much. His records can now be found in thousands of small shops around the world which would never have stocked them 30 or 40 years ago. OK, so he rubs shoulders with Pakistanis and Brazilians. So what. ‘World music’ is a marketing category and he’s on the map. 40 years ago all you could buy would be albums entitled ‘Postcard from Tahiti’ with photos of a bikini clad bronzed Eropean on the cover and a hotel orchestra of unknown origin inside. World music is progress.
Paul Simon just speeded things up a bit. The South African who introduced me to South African music was white and a personal friend of Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand). Now that’s just a fluke; you don’t meet many people like that. Whenever she visited him she risked arrest. When Graceland came out, Ladysmith Black Mambazo were not well known to white South Africans. That is just amazing.
None of my African friends have ever said anything negative about Paul Simon. Many own the Graceland CD. These are people who’d tell me very bluntly if they thought it should have been boycotted. I could tell some stories about that but I’ve gone on long enough.
All that said, yes Simon’s lyrics are weird in places. What could he have been thinking? I’m sure he never expected to be touring Africa playing those songs. But the only reason he was touring was that Africans liked the album. Go figure.
I didn’t need Paul Simon to introduce me to Ladysmith Black Mambazo, I simply heard them on a song played on the radio where I learned it was something from a Paul Simon album. The first place I actually saw them was on the Johnny Carson show–and Simon was not with them. I bought an album they had out at the time (theirs - not Paul Simon’s). I’ve never owned a Simon/Garfunkel album or any album Simon has done on his own. Rant away - he’s certainly not an iconic figure to me. I’m surprised anybody feels so strongly about someone whose career is dead and gone.
Good for you (discovering group w/o 'im). Last time I checked, he’s still pretty famous. In my area, saying you don’t like Paul Simon is like saying (chuckle) that you voted for Bush! heck, the other Weekender owns that Graceland cd etc. and harbors favorable feelings for him. I have similar alienation about Peter Paul and Mary and those endless pledge night PBS feel-good fests.
I never got how ultra-literate college kids, mostly pink and mostly from NYC, captured the essence of the “real folk” in those days. But I digress.
(Weekender trails off rant, singing, in clear English “I’m heading on down to the FISHIN’ hole!”)…
