Paul Simon – the Graceland album
13/09/2012 by Trevor Hlungwani.
This year sees the 25th anniversary of the release of Paul Simon‘s Graceland album. This year’s tour will include Thandiswa Mazwai who replaces Mama Africa Mariam Makeba on African Skies and Soweto Blues. It is one of my favourite albums of all time, and it is my favourite by Paul Simon, including his Simon & Garfunkel days (and, that means it is up against some pretty good albums like “There goes rhyming’ Simon” and “Bridge over troubled water“). To my mind, it is one of the greatest albums of all time, and certainly in a very short list of greatest albums of the 1980s. Graceland won the 1987 Grammy for the best album of the year.
I remember first hearing Graceland from Metro FM in October2008, although I have heard of a White artist from America collaborating with black people, Especially a Tsonga artist from Limpopo. I liked it straight away, even though it was like nothing I had ever heard before. I think it was the first time I had really heard any “African” music blended with Pop and Rock music, and I was breath-taken by the complex rhythms and melodies in the music.
Whether Paul Simon helped or hindered the cause for South African blacks’ liberation is a very interesting debate. Yes, he broke the UN embargo on cultural exchanges with South Africa, and flew in the face of the desires of the African National Congress and Artists Against Apartheid. But, as he points out in this documentary, he was invited by black musicians to go there and play music with them, and certainly his album Graceland brought this “township music” to an audience it would never otherwise have reached. I myself had not heard any African or South African music before I heard Graceland, but soon after I downloaded I enjoyed the music. This is the album that broke the cultural and racial barriers.
