All Intensive Purposes

It was 20 years ago today that Paul Simon's Graceland was released. Enthused by a couple of compilation tapes he had heard, Simon travelled to South Africa to record with some of the country's leading black musicians. The resulting album saved his career, and made several others. Its repercussions were widespread. It kickstarted the whole concept of world music. . . .

Listening closely to Graceland today is a strange experience. At the time, its acoustic instrumentation felt like a welcome relief from the slick artificiality of mid-1980s corporate rock. In hindsight, it is clearly a recording of its time: the drums still crash like Jake La Motta's fists, and odd warbles of synthesizer are apparent in the mix. The last two tracks, "That Was Your Mother" and "All Around The World", recorded in Louisianan and Angeleno styles, do not fit, except for being accordion-driven.

More alarming, for an album recorded in the darkest days of apartheid, is the seeming obliviousness to political context. Simon finds himself at the cinematographer's party, or in a taxi heading downtown, as the music of the townships seethes in the background. On the title track he co-opts Ray Phiri's sparkling guitar into a narrative not about present-day Africa but about the legacy of the American Civil War.

But of course South African radio was not exactly jumping with musical denunciations of apartheid either. Township music was elliptical in the extreme. As Gwen Ansell discusses in Soweto Blues: Jazz, Popular Music and Politics in South Africa, black musicians played a complex game with the censors, sometimes covertly aided by the state broadcasters. Graceland operated in a similar way. It said nothing explicit about the situation in South Africa, but it celebrated its culture and focused attention on the country.

More attention came from the controversy that soon surrounded the project. South Africa was the subject of an ill thought-through cultural boycott, and the commissars of the left decided that Simon had breached it. A stance intended to deprive white South Africans of the pleasure of attending concerts by Queen and Status Quo had become a tool to prevent mbaqanga from being heard in the West. Once Simon toured with the album, the self-appointed guardians of musical isolationism campaigned against it. On stage, the band climaxed with a rendition of the national anthem "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrica"; outside, pickets tried to persuade audiences not to enter.

For Ladysmith Black Mambazo, participation in Graceland had the commercial impetus of a rocket. South African and southern African musicians found it much easier to get airplay in the UK and US. For a brief time, Sotho squeezebox rhythms were at home on Radio 1. The concept of world music as a marketing label stems from a meeting of luminaries in an Islington pub around this time. It may have happened anyway, but there seems little doubt that all of us who love this kind of music owe Graceland a debt of gratitude. . . .

// posted by t.s. @ 6:42 AM