{"id":7007,"date":"2012-08-02T02:20:52","date_gmt":"2012-08-02T09:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=7007"},"modified":"2012-08-02T02:20:52","modified_gmt":"2012-08-02T09:20:52","slug":"paul-simon-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2012\/08\/paul-simon-2\/","title":{"rendered":"PAUL SIMON"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"P<\/strong>AUL SIMON\u00a0<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Graceland: 25th Anniversary\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

[Sony Legacy]<\/p>\n

Perhaps the rhythmic experiments on Paul Simon\u2019s 1986 album Graceland<\/em> should have come as no surprise. He had always known a striking backbeat when he heard one, reaching back as far as \u201cCecilia,\u201d \u201cMother and Child Reunion\u201d and \u201c50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.\u201d But when Simon fell for the joyful sounds of South Africa and sought to incorporate them into his own music, he soon discovered that he had a political tiger by the tail. Blacks were an oppressed majority there in the era of apartheid, and Simon had to prove his plans weren\u2019t just another example of white exploitation. With Afrikaner minority rule almost two decades gone in South Africa, opinions still differ as to whether Simon\u2019s collaborations with native musicians represented a tacit endorsement of a corrupt regime or a devastating protest against it.<\/p>\n

Included in this two-CD, two-DVD set, director Joe Berlinger\u2019s feature-length documentary about the making of Graceland <\/em>lays out those arguments forthrightly. Still, the album itself remains the ultimate testament to the correctness of Simon\u2019s instincts. A pitch-perfect match of Simon\u2019s hyper-intellectual lyrics and the players\u2019 indomitable grooves (it\u2019s no wonder bassist Bakithi Kumalo remains a member of Simon\u2019s band today), Graceland<\/em> demonstrated the humanity and vibrancy of South Africa so effectively that the eventual collapse of apartheid seems inevitable in retrospect. Also included in this box is a 1987 concert video that further spotlights the South African musicians involved, as well as an intriguing but frustratingly skimpy CD of outtakes. \u2013CN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PAUL SIMON\u00a0 Graceland: 25th Anniversary\u00a0 \u00a0 [Sony Legacy] Perhaps the rhythmic experiments on Paul Simon\u2019s 1986 album Graceland should have come as no surprise. He had always known a striking backbeat when he heard one, reaching back as far as \u201cCecilia,\u201d \u201cMother and Child Reunion\u201d and \u201c50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.\u201d But when Simon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[196,4442,4300,1857,681],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7007"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7007"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7009,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7007\/revisions\/7009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}