When this came out, the fusion of Paul Simon tunes with African mbaqanga music was something new and exciting (to Western audiences at least), although if you’ve been following this list through, you’ll know that the likes of Miriam Makeba, Fela Kuti, and Youssou N’Dour have been pioneering Afrobeat music for a long time so here, in context, it does feel a little like Simon is elbowing his way into an established scene.
It doesn’t help that, at the time, there were concerns about breaking the cultural embargo on South Africa over Apartheid. I’d argue that by promoting musicians such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the Boyoyo Boys on a world stage, Simon did more to break down Apartheid than he did to prop up PW Botha’s government. And, this album remains. Apartheid has long gone (aside from in the mouldy-potato-shaped head of a certain billionaire tosspot).
On musical merits alone, the songs are great. They lyrically addresse Simon’s favourite theme of alienation, with a lot of dispossessed characters, but also unusually carries a sense of finding somewhere to belong. Whether it is the divorced father and child on their pilgrimage to Graceland, or the middle-aged man realising that his role-model has “ducked back down an alley with a roly-poly little bat-faced girl” in You Can Call Me Al, to Joseph wandering Beneath African Skies, the sense of home and belonging pervades the album.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo, fronted by Joseph Shabalala, lead a Zulu a capella number Homeless (the style is called isicathamiya) about displacement and home, while That Was Your Mother abruptly takes on a zydeco style (with Good Rockin' Dopsie and the Twisters) on a tale of “how I met your mother”, another story about where we come from and where we are going.
The album begins with a terrorist bombing, a cause of disruption and chaos, but ends “over the mountain, down in the valley” where a former talk-show host lives a life of quiet retirement, and where former army posts return to nature. Throughout, Simon’s lyrical dexterity shines through, my favourite from Gumboots “I was having this discussion in a taxi heading downtown. Rearranging my position on this friend of mine who had a little bit of a breakdown. I said "Hey, you know breakdowns come, and breakdowns go. So, what are you going to do about it? That's what I'd like to know."”
This is another of those albums that I played a lot, a long time ago, and returning to it, I still like it.
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