The early 1980s weren’t especially kind to Paul Simon. He ushered in the second decade of his post–Simon & Garfunkel life with One Trick Pony, a forgettable companion album to a forgettable film starring his former musical partner, Art Garfunkel. When a 1981 reunion concert with Garfunkel brought 500,000 people to New York’s Central Park, and sold over two million albums in the United States, the two began touring together. But “creative differences” brought the arrangement to a premature end, and a planned Simon & Garfunkel album became a Simon solo release, Hearts and Bones, that was the lowest-charting of his career. With the breakup of his marriage to the actress Carrie Fisher, “I had a personal blow, a career setback and the combination of the two put me into a tailspin,” Simon told his biographer Marc Eliot.
During this dark period, Simon was mentoring a young Norwegian songwriter, Heidi Berg. Berg gave Simon a cassette of mbaqanga music featuring musicians from Soweto, then the most notorious blacks-only township in apartheid South Africa. While the identity of the album Simon heard is uncertain, it likely featured the Boyoyo Boys, a popular Sowetan band, and listening to the cassette in his car, Simon began writing new melody lines and lyrics on top of the sax, guitar, bass, and drums of their existing tracks.
“What I was consciously frustrated with was the system of sitting and writing a song and then going into the studio and trying to make a record of that song. And if I couldn’t find the right musicians or I couldn’t find the right way of making those tracks, then I had a good song and a kind of mediocre record,” Simon told Billboard magazine’s Timothy White. “I set out to make really good tracks, and then I thought, ‘I have enough songwriting technique that I can reverse this process and write the song after the tracks are made.’”
In the hopes of working this new way, Simon appealed to his record company, Warner Bros., to set up a recording session with the Boyoyo Boys. In 1985, that was far from an easy task. Since 1961, the British Musicians Union had maintained a cultural boycott of South Africa, managed by the UN Center against Apartheid. The boycott was designed to prevent musicians from performing at South African venues like Sun City, a hotel and casino located in the nominally independent bantustan of Bophuthatswana, an easy drive from Johannesburg and Pretoria. But the boycott covered all aspects of collaborations with South African musicians, and Simon was warned that he might face censure for working in South Africa.
When Simon turned to Warner Bros. for help, the company called Hilton Rosenthal. Then managing an independent record label in South Africa, Rosenthal had in the past worked with Johnny Clegg and Sipho Mchunu, the two musicians who became the heart of Juluku, a racially integrated band that electrified traditional Zulu music and brought it to a global audience. Rosenthal’s label had partnered with Warner Bros. to distribute Juluku’s records in the United States, so Warner executives knew he could help Simon navigate a relationship with South African musicians.
As a white South African who’d recorded a highly political, racially integrated band in apartheid Johannesburg, Rosenthal was aware of some of the difficulties Simon might face in recording with Sowetan musicians. He assured Simon that they would find a way to work together and sent him a pile of twenty South African records, both mbaqanga acts and choral groups including Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Then he arranged a meeting with his friend and producer Koloi Lebona, who set up a meeting with the black musicians’ union, to discuss whether members should record with Simon. (...)
The sessions that Rosenthal and Lebona organized led to Graceland, one of the most celebrated albums of the 1980s. It won Grammy awards in 1986 and 1987, topped many critics’ charts and regularly features on “top 100 albums of all time” lists. It also made a great deal of money for Simon and the musicians he worked with, selling over sixteen million copies. South African songwriters share credits and royalties with Simon on half of the album’s tracks, and Simon paid session musicians three times the US pay scale for studio musicians. Many involved with the project, including Ladysmith Black Mambazo, drummer Isaac Mtshali, and guitarist Ray Phiri went on to successful international music careers.
At its best, Graceland sounds as if Simon is encountering forces too large for him to understand or control. He’s riding on top of them, offering free-form reflections on a world that’s vastly more complicated and colorful than the narrow places he and Art Garfunkel explored in their close harmonies. The days of miracle and wonder Simon conjures up in “The Boy in the Bubble” are an excellent metaphor for anyone confronting our strange, connected world.
Collaborations like Graceland don’t happen without the participation of two important types of people: xenophiles and bridge figures. Xenophiles, lovers of the unfamiliar, are people who find inspiration and creative energy in the vast diversity of the world. They move beyond an initial fascination with a cultural artifact to make lasting and meaningful connections with the people who produced the artifact. Xenophiles aren’t just samplers or bricoleurs who put scraps to new use; they take seriously both forks of Kwame Appiah’s definition of cosmopolitans: they recognize the value of other cultures, and they honor obligations to people outside their own tribe, particularly the people they are influenced and shaped by. Simon distinguishes himself from McLaren by engaging with South African musicians as people and by becoming an advocate and promoter of their music.
Unlike xenophiles, outsiders who seek inspiration from other cultures, bridge figures straddle the borders between cultures, figuratively keeping one foot in each world. Hilton Rosenthal was able to broker a working relationship between a white American songwriter and dozens of black South African musicians during some of the most violent and tense moments of the struggle against apartheid. As a bridge, Rosenthal was an interpreter between cultures and an individual both groups could trust and identify with, an internationally recognized record producer who was also a relentless promoter of South Africa’s cultural richness. Rosenthal, in turn, credits Koloi Lebona with building the key bridges between black musicians and the South African recording community. (...)
What happens when people encounter another culture for the first time? Will we find a bridge figure to help us navigate these encounters? How often do we embrace the unfamiliar as xenophiles, and how often do we recoil and “hunker down,” as Robert Putnam observes?
It’s a question as old as the Odyssey, where Odysseus’s encounters with people of other lands remind readers that his name, in Greek, means “he who causes pain or makes others angry.” For all the kindly Phaeacians who sail Odysseus back to Ithaca, there are Cyclopes who eat men and destroy ships. When we encounter new cultures, should we expect cooperation or conflict? The political scientists Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart consider this ancient question through the lens of media. In their book Cosmopolitan Communications, they look at what happens when people encounter different cultures through television, film, the Internet, and other media.
by Ethan Zuckerman, Salon | Read more:
Image: Paul Simon, Malcolm Gladwell (Credit: AP/Luiz Ribeiro/Hachette Book Group)
During this dark period, Simon was mentoring a young Norwegian songwriter, Heidi Berg. Berg gave Simon a cassette of mbaqanga music featuring musicians from Soweto, then the most notorious blacks-only township in apartheid South Africa. While the identity of the album Simon heard is uncertain, it likely featured the Boyoyo Boys, a popular Sowetan band, and listening to the cassette in his car, Simon began writing new melody lines and lyrics on top of the sax, guitar, bass, and drums of their existing tracks.“What I was consciously frustrated with was the system of sitting and writing a song and then going into the studio and trying to make a record of that song. And if I couldn’t find the right musicians or I couldn’t find the right way of making those tracks, then I had a good song and a kind of mediocre record,” Simon told Billboard magazine’s Timothy White. “I set out to make really good tracks, and then I thought, ‘I have enough songwriting technique that I can reverse this process and write the song after the tracks are made.’”
In the hopes of working this new way, Simon appealed to his record company, Warner Bros., to set up a recording session with the Boyoyo Boys. In 1985, that was far from an easy task. Since 1961, the British Musicians Union had maintained a cultural boycott of South Africa, managed by the UN Center against Apartheid. The boycott was designed to prevent musicians from performing at South African venues like Sun City, a hotel and casino located in the nominally independent bantustan of Bophuthatswana, an easy drive from Johannesburg and Pretoria. But the boycott covered all aspects of collaborations with South African musicians, and Simon was warned that he might face censure for working in South Africa.
When Simon turned to Warner Bros. for help, the company called Hilton Rosenthal. Then managing an independent record label in South Africa, Rosenthal had in the past worked with Johnny Clegg and Sipho Mchunu, the two musicians who became the heart of Juluku, a racially integrated band that electrified traditional Zulu music and brought it to a global audience. Rosenthal’s label had partnered with Warner Bros. to distribute Juluku’s records in the United States, so Warner executives knew he could help Simon navigate a relationship with South African musicians.
As a white South African who’d recorded a highly political, racially integrated band in apartheid Johannesburg, Rosenthal was aware of some of the difficulties Simon might face in recording with Sowetan musicians. He assured Simon that they would find a way to work together and sent him a pile of twenty South African records, both mbaqanga acts and choral groups including Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Then he arranged a meeting with his friend and producer Koloi Lebona, who set up a meeting with the black musicians’ union, to discuss whether members should record with Simon. (...)
The sessions that Rosenthal and Lebona organized led to Graceland, one of the most celebrated albums of the 1980s. It won Grammy awards in 1986 and 1987, topped many critics’ charts and regularly features on “top 100 albums of all time” lists. It also made a great deal of money for Simon and the musicians he worked with, selling over sixteen million copies. South African songwriters share credits and royalties with Simon on half of the album’s tracks, and Simon paid session musicians three times the US pay scale for studio musicians. Many involved with the project, including Ladysmith Black Mambazo, drummer Isaac Mtshali, and guitarist Ray Phiri went on to successful international music careers.
At its best, Graceland sounds as if Simon is encountering forces too large for him to understand or control. He’s riding on top of them, offering free-form reflections on a world that’s vastly more complicated and colorful than the narrow places he and Art Garfunkel explored in their close harmonies. The days of miracle and wonder Simon conjures up in “The Boy in the Bubble” are an excellent metaphor for anyone confronting our strange, connected world.
Collaborations like Graceland don’t happen without the participation of two important types of people: xenophiles and bridge figures. Xenophiles, lovers of the unfamiliar, are people who find inspiration and creative energy in the vast diversity of the world. They move beyond an initial fascination with a cultural artifact to make lasting and meaningful connections with the people who produced the artifact. Xenophiles aren’t just samplers or bricoleurs who put scraps to new use; they take seriously both forks of Kwame Appiah’s definition of cosmopolitans: they recognize the value of other cultures, and they honor obligations to people outside their own tribe, particularly the people they are influenced and shaped by. Simon distinguishes himself from McLaren by engaging with South African musicians as people and by becoming an advocate and promoter of their music.
Unlike xenophiles, outsiders who seek inspiration from other cultures, bridge figures straddle the borders between cultures, figuratively keeping one foot in each world. Hilton Rosenthal was able to broker a working relationship between a white American songwriter and dozens of black South African musicians during some of the most violent and tense moments of the struggle against apartheid. As a bridge, Rosenthal was an interpreter between cultures and an individual both groups could trust and identify with, an internationally recognized record producer who was also a relentless promoter of South Africa’s cultural richness. Rosenthal, in turn, credits Koloi Lebona with building the key bridges between black musicians and the South African recording community. (...)
What happens when people encounter another culture for the first time? Will we find a bridge figure to help us navigate these encounters? How often do we embrace the unfamiliar as xenophiles, and how often do we recoil and “hunker down,” as Robert Putnam observes?
It’s a question as old as the Odyssey, where Odysseus’s encounters with people of other lands remind readers that his name, in Greek, means “he who causes pain or makes others angry.” For all the kindly Phaeacians who sail Odysseus back to Ithaca, there are Cyclopes who eat men and destroy ships. When we encounter new cultures, should we expect cooperation or conflict? The political scientists Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart consider this ancient question through the lens of media. In their book Cosmopolitan Communications, they look at what happens when people encounter different cultures through television, film, the Internet, and other media.
by Ethan Zuckerman, Salon | Read more:
Image: Paul Simon, Malcolm Gladwell (Credit: AP/Luiz Ribeiro/Hachette Book Group)
