Paul Simon's Graceland

It wasn't all that long ago that the 25th Anniversary edition of Paul Simon's Graceland CD came out.  I debated it for a while, then decided to order it.  I had never owned the CD, so I may have been part of a tiny minority that actually had a reason to order this (and not feel ripped off).  I actually had a dubbed cassette for quite a while, which eventually was replaced with a legitimate cassette (remember those -- ha ha).  There were a bewildering number of options: a CD/DVD set, a 2CD/2DVD set and a 3 CD/1DVD Amazon exclusive.

All or nearly all of the bonus tracks are tacked to the end of the single CD in the CD/DVD set, somewhat undercutting the need for the box set.  Some of the reviewers have said the bonus tracks are actually pretty interesting.  The DVD in all three sets is the Under African Skies documentary (which includes the famous SNL version of Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes).

If I was in the market for a box set, then I would definitely go for the one with the DVD of the African Concert in it. However, it seems pretty likely that this will be released as a stand-alone DVD within the next year or so. And probably I will pick it up if it comes out.

I am digging the alternative version of Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes. Basically, it strips out the horns (and the Ladysmith chorus at the front, though they come in at the end, which in a way works well since it is so surprising -- well, in the alternate universe where this version was the released one).  I think the actual release is a bit better, but it's really interesting to hear this version.

The You Can Call Me Al video is as lame as ever. I don't recall ever seeing the Diamonds video on MTV, though I suppose I probably did. The SNL performance of Diamonds looks quite good and Paul sounds great. I actually had a chance to see Paul Simon play Chicago just a year or two ago in a smallish club, and now I am kicking myself that I didn't go. Ah well.  What started getting to me and contributed to a really bad case of nostalgia was seeing just how young and vibrant Paul Simon looked back in the 80s.  He was really at a sustained peak, and the current documentary footage shows him looking old.  I realize it happens to almost everyone (except those that die young), but some times this hits harder than at others.  You think -- I was in undergrad 25 freaking years ago -- and you just get depressed.

It wasn't just the video evidence, I kind of dived back into the politics of the album, in a way that I hadn't in years and years.  There was such a big kerfuffle about Graceland, particularly whether Paul Simon should have respected the boycott and recorded it somewhere else, i.e. not in South Africa. I took a bit of a hard line back in the day, particularly on whether he was exploiting Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Now a lot of those concerns seem pretty silly.  While I did care and supported the boycott, I didn't do that much that was actually tangible, though I donated to the ANC cause and got a bracelet with a political prisoner's name on it.  We were supposed to wear these everywhere, and indeed I did for two solid years (it often turned my wrist green!).  I remember starting to worry about what I would do when I had to enter the workforce, but to almost everyone's surprise the government agreed to a negotiated end to apartheid.  In many ways, it has been an unbelievable success -- that the end of apartheid was far less bloody -- and has involved far less retribution against whites (than Zimbabwe certainly) -- than anyone really expected.  So I was able to remove my bracelet with a clear conscience.  I guess it is important to remember these things -- the self-righteousness of the young that co-exists somewhat uneasily with their idealism...

I suppose more than anything, I have less faith in the wisdom of the collective, even the politicians of the ANC, today than I did back then. Still, I probably wouldn't fall precisely in line with Paul, who feels that politicians are always trying to harness musicians for their own ends and in general restrict them, so that musicians should only answer to the higher power of art.  But the one remaining highly critical voice (in the documentary at any rate) does come across as petty, when it basically seems that the main issue isn't that Paul performed for whites in South Africa (which would clearly have been odious) but that he worked with Black musicians (giving them opportunities that they desperately longer for) without checking it in advance with the ANC.  Still, I give Simon props for including one or two critical voices in what is otherwise a love-fest of a documentary (even Oprah weighs in and says that Graceland is her favorite CD of all time).

Where I clearly feel today that I was in the wrong back in the 80s was that I really felt Paul Simon was exploiting Blacksmith Lady Mambazo and because of the power imbalance they weren't in a real position to negotiate with him -- and that fundamentally he got more from them than they got in exchange.  I'd say that that was a pretty patronizing line (not that power imbalances don't remain). The musicians really longed for opportunities to make music and then beyond that they were thrilled with the opportunities to tour (opportunities that the South African government routinely denied them -- still unclear why they ever got visas in the first place, though maybe it was a counter-PR move by the Botha government).  One of the managers admits that he kind of downplayed the trouble Paul would face (from breaking the boycott), simply because he thought this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  And it is certainly true that many of these African musicians and groups became superstars outside of Africa, and that probably would not have happened without the Graceland album and even more importantly the tour.

Beyond that, you can see Paul working with the musicians in the studio and then on tour, and you can simply see the mutual respect that was present.  Had I had the opportunity to see that at the time, I might have taken a different, more nuanced (softer) stance.  Another thing that was quite interesting, and I didn't realize until seeing the documentary, was that Paul more or less went in and recorded instrumental tracks -- in a few cases, literally just having them record slightly different versions of their own songs, more frequently jamming on various riffs they came up with together.  Then Paul took all the tapes and with the help of some master producers, pieced it together and added lyrics.  Wow.  In some cases, the music had changed so much that for the tour the musicians had to basically learn their parts all over again to match the album. 

Anyway, in short, I am glad that the music came out.  Paul Simon was right and nearly all his critics were wrong.  I've been listening to the CD a lot since it turned up, and it is simply brilliant (even if it does threaten to keep me anchored in the 80s a bit more than is healthy...).

P.S. It turns out that Los Lobos still has a beef about the last official track, since they feel the music is theirs and they didn't get proper credit.  Not surprisingly, that is not mentioned in the documentary.  Still doesn't undermine the album, but it is a shame that there are still some bad feelings surrounding it.