WHERE’S GARFUNKEL?

WHERE’S GARFUNKEL?

PAUL SIMON WITH LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO, HUGH MASEKELA AND MIRIAM MAKEBA

Radio City Music Hall, New York April 26, 1987

Jim Feldman

There’s one in every crowd, and in the instance of the five-night New York run of Paul Simon’s Graceland show, it was the reviewer for the New York Post (a daily rag). He liked the concert well enough, but thought that devoting only about half of the two-and-a-half hour program to Simon’s music was wrong since, to paraphrase, the crowd was paying to see Paul Simon. And furthermore, he couldn’t understand what the ensemble closing number, “God Bless Africa”—an anthem banned in South Africa—had to do with what preceded it.

The Post review was to laugh—and we did, because, as Simon said (sorry 'bout that) at the outset, the evening was about “the music of South Africa and the Graceland album.” One mark of the show’s brilliance in conception and execution was that the Posf s writer appeared to be alone in his dissatisfaction—even though much of the audience was, indeed, comprised of Simon fans, many of whom first became aware of South African music via the Graceland album.

But by interspersing his material with the numbers by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba (as opposed to structuring the show on separate sets), Simon— as much host as performer, and the only white person onstage—helped the audience to make the connections between his South African-based, American pop tunes and traditional mbaqanga (township jive) and other South African musics. His exuberant band—the finest he’s ever had—backed up (in various configurations) all the artists, who, at times, played and sang with each other—further stressing kinship.

Among Simon’s biggest crowd-pleasers were “You Can Call Me Al”; “Gumboots,” which segued seamlessly and serendipitously into the 1957 Del-Vikings hit, “Whispering Bells”; “Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes,” which featured some nifty footwork from Ladysmith Black Mambazo; and his two blasts from the past, an Airicanaccented “Mother And Child Reunion” and a simple, elegiac “The Boxer,” which gained an impact in the context of the show. Trumpeter/flugelhornist Masekela was impressive on “Stimeia” and “Bring Him Back Home,” powerful songs about, respectively, the train that takes miners into South Africa and the imprisoned black leader, Nelson Mandela. (Masekela, unfortunately, was also responsible for the show’s one loser, a lame Jon Lucien ballad.)

The elegant Makeba clicked and popped her way delightfully through one song with the three South African women who added terrific vocal textures throughout the concert, and then she delivered a thoroughly sobering version of Masekela’s "Soweto Blues,” which has to do with black children held in detention centers. She also joined Simon on “Under African Skies.” But it was the 10-man Zulu choir, led by Joseph Shabalala, who almost walked—make that danced—away with the show. Their work with Simon was, as expected, lapidary, but their own numbers were showstopping marvels. Their full-body moves and inimitable choreography were just too cool for words, and singing in Zulu with dazzling precision in styles including call-and-response, tight harmonizing, and looser R&B, their words needed no translation.

The Graceland show was great entertainment, a musical education—and most effective politics. The presence of Masekela and Makeba (both in political exile from South Africa), their topical songs, the concluding anthem, and Makeba’s expressed desire to someday invite Paul Simon to perform in a free South Africa were the only direct references to the struggle against apartheid. But it was the spirit in the music and in its presentation that most clearly enunciated the justness of the cause.