Graceless in ‘Graceland’

ON SEPT. 22, 2018, Paul Simon took to an outdoor stage in his native borough of Queens, N.Y., for the last show of his aptly named “Homeward Bound” farewell tour. After 52 years near the top of the music business, Simon was finally ready to get off the bus for good. Simon’s not taking a vow of musical silence, but he does say that he has no plans for further work.

So, let’s take the man at his word and assume that this could be a good time to assess what the singer-songwriter has meant to his audiences, his country, and, in the end, the great march of human culture.

That may sound a little grandiose for a guy who started as a hack songwriter in the Brill Building pop factory and made his first record (with Art Garfunkel, of course) under the name “Tom and Jerry.” But after the whole “The Sound of Silence,” folk-rock thing passed, Simon went on a long, long run in which he often elevated the American pop song to the level of high art. And, from “America,” dropped into the maelstrom of 1968, to the Nixon era’s “American Tune,” to “Wristband” in the age of Trump, he occasionally even captured the spirit of his age in a memorable, hummable verse, chorus, and bridge.

In brief, the guy’s a genius. And, though he started in the era when singer-songwriters were supposed to be the new poets, his real genius turned out to be musical: those infectious tunes and, from the mid-’70s on, those propulsive rhythmic arrangements.

Which brings us to Graceland (1986), the towering monument in the middle of Simon’s long career. Graceland's fusion of American pop and African roots takes the listener on a musical joyride that marks the apex of Simon’s achievement. Its appeal will probably last forever, with subsequent generations discovering and rediscovering it, the way they do with the Beatles. I know my kids and their peers came to it via its influence on Vampire Weekend. That’s bound to keep happening.

And there lies the problem in assessing Simon’s cultural legacy, because Graceland, for all its musical brilliance, is also one of the most morally compromised works of the late 20th century. Simon recorded the album in the apartheid state of South Africa, in knowing defiance of the U.N. cultural boycott of the nation. He paid his black South African collaborators very well and brought their work before a global audience, but the boycott was important. More important than the artistic impulses or personal generosity of any one man. Isolating the apartheid regime was an essential part of the strategy that led to the regime’s downfall. And isolation meant isolation, with no exceptions for good intentions.

Simon knew all this when he did it. Before going to South Africa, he checked with singer and activist Harry Belafonte, who told him he needed to ask the African National Congress. Simon deliberately went ahead without doing this.

During those same years in the mid-’80s, E Street Band guitarist Steven Van Zandt was devoting most of his time to organizing musicians and other artists in support of the anti-apartheid boycott. According to Van Zandt, when he confronted Simon about Graceland, the singer said, “What are you doing defending this guy Mandela? He’s obviously a communist. My friend Henry Kissinger told me about where all of the money’s coming from.”

So, there we have it. At a crucial moment, history placed before Simon a clear and crucial choice between solidarity and self-fulfillment, and with eyes wide open, he made the wrong choice. That doesn’t erase his achievements as an artist or, for that matter, his good works before or since. But going forward the story of Simon’s choice must be retold whenever and wherever the Graceland music is heard.