Society for Ethnomusicology - Introduction to World Music

Transcription

Society for Ethnomusicology
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Paul Simon's Graceland, South Africa,
and the Mediation of Musical Meaning
LOUISE MEINTJES
UNIVERSITYOF TEXASAT AUSTIN
The presence of style indicatesstrongcommunity,an intense sociabilitythat
has been given shape throughtime, an assertionof control over collective
feelings so powerfulthatany expressiveinnovatorwill necessarilyput his or
her contentinto thatshapingcontinuumand no other.(Keil 1985:122)
n August 1986 Warner Brothers released Graceland, an album made by
Paul Simon in collaboration with a number of Americanand South African
musicians. It is a collage of some styles current in the United States and
urban Black South Africanstyles, themselves products of years of U.S.-South
African links in the music industry. As a composite of styles, each richly
embedded with social and historical meaning, Graceland is a complex
polysemic sign vehicle that comes to stand for social collaboration. The
collaborative nature of the music and musicmakingprocess itself links Graceland to this social meaning.
I argue that the album operates as a sign which is principally interpreted
by means of the notion of collaboration. This notion of collaboration is
established in the music itself. The musical collaboration then comes to
stand for social collaboration through a series of "interpretivemoves" (Feld
1984) on the part of the listener. Collaboration operates in this context in
two ways. First, it is established in the music, that is, in the way styles are
intertwined, and in the composition, production, and promotional processes.1 It is a projection by the producers presented to the consumers and
made apparent in the marketing publicity and the media commentary. Second, this idea of collaboration presented by the music is understood differently by various interpreters, each coming to Graceland with a unique set
of accumulated sociopolitical and cultural experiences. Each set of experi1Iam indebted to Steve Feld and discussion with UTgraduate students in a seminar on popular
music and the mass media for development of this notion of musical collaboration in Graceland.
37
38
Ethnomusicology, Winter 1990
ences includes the listener's own ideas about what constitutes collaboration.
Understanding collaboration is an evaluative interpretive move engaged in
by the consumers.
Thus collaboration itself becomes a new sign vehicle created in the
minds of the interpreters as a way to understand the sign Graceland.2
Specifically, Graceland's musical collaboration is valued or criticized by
different listeners in terms of how they value or criticize the social collaboration between a White American and Black South Africans that I claim
Graceland expresses and represents. It is embraced if the social collaboration it signifies is valued, while it is rejected if the social collaboration it
signifies is opposed. However, listeners who adhere to a bourgeois aesthetic
principle which privileges the inherent transcendency of art may evaluate
the album in terms of the success of its musical collaboration only and
regard the signification of social collaboration as irrelevant.Therefore, the
political dynamicsfrom which and through which the music derives meaning
remain highly ambiguous.
Precisely because Graceland's political ambiguityenhances the possibility of multiple readings, the album presents an ideal case in which to examine
the contribution of the political implications of a project to its musical
meaning. This is because the radical differences between various readings
highlight the process of interpretation in operation. My interest here lies
in how politics become significant in musical meaning. Whatis the process?
I will demonstrate that the political is not merely an adjunct to the sound
but embedded in it through strings of connected signs. The embeddedness
of the political in the sonic means that the political becomes entangled in
and communicated through affective experience. This capacity of music to
communicate through affect, to communicate feelingfully and intuitively, is
a source of its potency (Giles and Shepherd 1988:17).
Graceland is exceptionally powerful as a sign vehicle for three principal
and related reasons. First, the idea of collaboration is embedded in many
levels of the music and musicmaking process. Second, the ambiguity of its
political orientation allows multiple interpretations of that collaboration.
Third,interpretationsof thatcollaboration are tied through icons and indices
to listeners' sense of themselves (linked to their positioning in social space
[Bourdieu 1984]) so thattheir interpretationsare felt to be true and natural.
Graceland's success on the basis of sales and as a complex sign is
dependent on its appeal to a wide range of listeners who are able to make
sense of what they hear in relation to their own lives. The multiple readings
2Collaboration,in Peircean terms, is an interpretant.Following Peirce's triadic theory of signs,
the interpretantis here understood to be a sign itself that is used to understand the object-sign
vehicle relation in its own triad. It is "perhaps a more developed sign" created in the mind
of the interpreter in the process of understanding the meaning of the first sign.
Paul Simon's Graceland
39
of these listeners are facilitated by the lack of definition in Paul Simon's
public political stance towards South Africa and by the ambiguity of the
political statement presented in the album itself. Simon's public stance
towards South Africais informed by his liberal attitude toward the relationship between politics and art. This is conveyed in the following statement
made during an interview conducted in Zimbabwe:
... I amnot a SouthAfricanandcannotchoose,as a publicpersonality,a specific
politicalpartyin SouthAfrica.Thereare so manythatI cannotreallyendorse
any one in particular.The only sentimentI reallyfeel I should expresson the
issue is thatas faras all politicalpartiesare concerned... they should not tell
me how I should playor write my music.(Rathboneand Talbot,Bits 1987)
Even though Simon consulted prominent musical figures in the antiapartheid movement (Harry Belafonte, for example) before embarking on
the project, Graceland was not conceived in political terms:
... I didn't say "I'd love to bridge cultures somewhere in the world, and
mmm... where?MaybeSouthAfrica."No, I justfell in love withthe musicand
cultural.Lookingat thingsculturally,
wantedto play.... Myview is instinctually
as I did with Graceland... there's a political implication but essentially I come
at the world from a culturalsociologicalpoint of view, and they [his radical
critics]want to define the world politically.(McNeilLehrerReport,PBS25
February1987)
The absence of direct semantic references to apartheid in South Africa
promotes the ambiguity of the political orientation of the album itself.
Furthermore, the minimal general reference to South Africain the lyrics is
obscure, Simon's liner notes exclude sociopolitical discussion, and the
album graphics represent nothing South African. The front cover depicts
an Ethiopian effigy, Simon's name, and the album title.3
Graceland's music and metacommentary are not presented as discourses about power discrepancies based specifically on race and located
specifically in South Africa. It is left up to the individual listener to make
sense of the musical collaboration in her or his own terms. This equivocation
permits multiple and often conflicting paths of inference. It can thus serve
the interests of various and even opposing sociopolitical groups. These may
even include groups that Simon and the collaborating musicians would not
choose to support.
Before describing the political signification process in Graceland, I
must emphasize that my focus on the political discourse is not meant to
diminish the significance of the musical discourse. The album is musically
3HarryBelafonte's album Paradise in Gazankulu, also made with South African musicians,
and released soon afterGraceland is an example of a projectwith an explicitly political agenda.
40
interesting:the structuralintegration of diverse musical elements is skillfully
crafted; the production is superb; and the musicians are all experienced
professionals. Additionally,Graceland is not a musical anomaly in the contemporary internationalmarket.It is part of a history of links between North
American and South African music through the recording industry and
through touring performers (see Coplan 1985, Erlmann 1987, and Hamm
1988). It is also part of the 1980s' World Beat trend in popular music. Other
examples are Talking Heads' Remain in Light (1980) and Naked (1988),
Peter Gabriel'sSo (1986), StewartCopeland's TheRhythmatist(1985), Rolling
Stones' Steel Wheels (1989), Kate Bush's Sensual World (1989), and Art of
Noise's Yebo (1989). (See Feld's discussion of the current Africanizationof
Western pop [Feld 1988a].) Notable reasons for Gracelands enormous success, then, are that the participants are skilled artists, their product is accomplished, and the genres Graceland represents and presents are currently
highly valued in the music market.
COLLABORATION
AS MUSICAL PROCESS
There is a deliberate effort to convey a sense of mutual cooperation
and benefit in the composition and production of Graceland-in the international promotional tour organization, in the integration of musical styles
and languages, and in the metacommentaryabout all of these aspects of the
project. Each of these operates collaboratively on many levels from the
smallest structural integration to the most general.
The Composition Process
Simon's approach to composing varies from song to song. Although
none has been conceived from start to finish by him alone, some involve
more input from his fellow Graceland participantsthan others.
"Homeless" is clearly the most collaborativelyconceived of the album's
songs. In the liner notes Simon described the collaborative process involved
in its composition. The lyrics and melody were pieced together bit by bit,
some by LadysmithBlack Mambazo, some by Simon, some together. They
composed some new lyrics and melodies, and inserted these into existing
material from various sources. They made musical and linguistic changes
to each other's contributions.They integratedZulu with English,and Simon's
with LadysmithBlack Mambazo'svocals. Essentiallyneither Simon nor Ladysmith Black Mambazo'sleader Shabalalahad a preconception of the song.
Rather it evolved over time, shaped from its center outwards as they
negotiated, discussed, and experimented.
Joseph Shabalalaand I wrote in English and in Zulu, starting the piece in the
middle and working outwards to the beginning and the end. The process began
41
with the melodyand words:"Weare
when I sent him a demo of HOMELESS
homeless, homeless/moonlightsleeping on the midnightlake."In my note
accompanyingthe cassette,I suggestedthathe makeanychangesin harmony
or words that he wanted,and told him to feel free to continuethe story in
Zulu,addingwhatevermelodicchangeshe felt appropriate.
A month later,we met for the first time in London'sAbbeyRoadstudios.
AfterhearingJoseph'sadditionsto the song, we both felt we were on to something and decided to expand the piece. Thinkingof a trackfrom one of my
favoriteLadysmith
albums,I triedwritingEnglishlyricsthatwouldslip intothat
pre-existingsong. This is the "somebodysay..." section,and we used it as a
bridgefrom the end of the "homeless..." lyricsto the Zulupartthatfollows.
At this point, we attacheda typicalLadysmithending,one thatJoseph had
used on manyof his songs.A roughtranslationof these finalwordscomes out
as, "Wewould like to announceto the entire nationthatwe are the best at
singingin this style."Thatconcludeddayone.
On the second day,the groupshowedme an introductionthey'dworkedon
late into the night.The melody came from a traditionalZuluwedding song,
but the new lyricsnow told of people livingin caveson the side of a mountain,
cold and hungry,theirfistsused as pillows.Thisnew introductionfell into the
body of the song and completedthe collaboration.(Gracelandliner notes)
The fact that the music was packaged with this detailed explanation on
the cover indicates that collaboration is a significant feature of Graceland's
public image.
Another way that Simon presents a joint composition process is through
crediting co-writers and arrangers on a number of the songs, including
"Homeless." Credits, however, are inconsistently assigned with regard to
the cover versions on the album. I will return briefly to this problem.
It is notable that Simon chooses to tell us about the evolution of "Homeless," the most cooperatively conceived song on the album, and not about
other songs in which his control over the contribution of fellow musicians
is indisputable. For example, on a number of tracks, musicians were paid
to play backups as a studio band rather than to co-write the songs, yet their
contribution is distinctive and clearly part of the particularkind of compositional process that Simon employs, which is described in the quotation
below. Los Lobos's Cesar Rosas describes the disjunctions between Simon's
expectations and those of the band:
When[Simon]approachedus he was alreadyinto this, he had been to South
Africa.We expectedhim to have a song for us to interpretwhen we met him
in Los Angeles, but he said, "Youguys just play," and we said "Playwhat?"We
justworkedup a bunch of stuffthathe eventuallygot a song out of, and that
was it.... I think there was a little lack of communicationearly on. You get
involvedin the situation,and all we're supposedto worryaboutis the creative
part... we felt a littledetachedfromthe finishedpiece;we didn'thaveanyreal
involvement in it. (Davis 1987:C10)
42
Production
The integration of a number of musicians representing a wide stylistic,
geographical, ethnic, and sociopolitical range on the album also promotes
a collaborative image. Various cuts of the album include Los Lobos, Good
Rockin' Dopsie and the Twisters, Linda Ronstadt, the Everly Brothers,
Senegalese musicians Youssou N'dour, Barbacar Faye, and Assane Thiam,
South African acts Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Stimela, Tao Ea Matsekha, and
General M.D. Shirinda and the Gaza Sisters, Simon, and American studio
musicians.
The production of the album also required collaborative organization.
Recording of various parts took place inJohannesburg, Los Angeles, Lafayette
Louisiana, London, and New York. Even different tracks of a song were
recorded in various studios in different cities, finally mixed down in Hit
City Studios in New York City.
World Tour Organization
The financial management of the international promotional tour and
the publicity surrounding the tour highlighted Simon's commitment to his
co-workers and his image as a humanistic and well-intentioned collaborator.
Simon represented himself as a philanthropist. First, he brought Ladysmith
Black Mambazo and Stimela to the U.S. for recording and promotion of
Graceland at his own expense. After the release of the album, he sponsored
the world tour. This included concerts in Zimbabwe, Europe, the U.K., the
U.S., andJapan. Harare, Zimbabwe was chosen as the closest possible venue
to South Africa. Prior to the two concerts there, Graceland's management
and the Zimbabwean government reached an agreement that no money
would leave Zimbabwe. In fact, Simon's promoters agreed to pay the
shortfall, estimated at Zimbabwean $20,000, out of a special account opened
in London for this purpose. Costs included donations of $15,000 each to a
leprosy institution and to the National Arts Foundation of Zimbabwe. Simon
paid all the musicians but received no remuneration for the concerts himself.4
The tour's financial management and concert scheduling also demonstrated the musicians' concern for worldwide social inequalities. Through
charity donations and choice of some concert venues the Graceland participants drew attention to racial inequalities in access to resources and expressed
the musicians' sense of responsibility to communities with which they share
a history of racial repression. For example, the local South African musicians
4Instead he is receiving the profit from the sale of the video of the event which has been
distributed internationally.
43
gave free concerts in Black townships of South Africaprior to the tour. The
second U.S. leg of the tour included venues and cities which draw a predominantly Black and often economically poor audience. These are venues
and cities that are frequently ignored by touring stars. In addition to playing
in these venues, the Graceland participantsdonated some proceeds from
the tour to African and African-Americancharities.
The inclusion of two exiled South Africanson the world tour-Miriam
Makebaand Hugh Masekela-also represented the attemptto bring together
various musical parties under one cooperative umbrella. The political status
of Makeba and Masekela as musical advocates for the liberation movement
of South Africafurther validates, or attempts to validate,5the political "correctness" of the project and dispels, or attemptsto dispel, criticism of Simon
as a musical colonizer.
Stylistic Integration
In the above examples, collaboration implies direct and immediate
cooperation and is concerned with combinations of sounds, of people, and
of institutions that exist synchronically.My conception of collaboration also
includes an historical dimension, which is principally incorporated through
Gracelands musical style. I use the term musical style here in the sense
formulated by Keil (1987), Feld (1988b), and Turino (1989). Musical style
in this sense is an intuitive, felt, social feature expressing, forming, and
representing a social coherence system. This concept of style is essential to
understanding how the political becomes embedded in the musical.
Musical styles on Graceland can be read as collaboratively intertwined.
The way distinct styles are structurally integrated rather than merely juxtaposed is illustrated by the instrumental break of the album's hit song,
"YouCan Call Me Al."The featured instruments in this instrumentalbreakthe pennywhistle and bass guitar-index or reference three Black South
African genres. The pennywhistle references kwela, the bass guitar references mbube, and the way they are combined is typical of mbaqanga.
Kwelawas a Blackurban genre in the 1950s and early 1960s. It originated
among urbanyouths as improvisationalstreet music played on pennywhistles
and guitars. David Coplan suggests, in fact, that it was on the pennywhistle
that the foundations of an indigenous South Africanjazz were built (Coplan
1985:158-60). The pennywhistle therefore brings with it to Graceland that
complex of meanings configured around early South Africanjazz. That is,
it brings with it meanings associated with one of the most prominent expres5Some radicals criticized Makebaand Masekela for their collaboration; some liberation movement advocates questioned their participation.
44
sive forms in black townships during one of the most repressive decades
of apartheid.(See Coplan [1985:143-202]and Lodge [1983]for rich discussion
of this period.)
In order to appeal more strongly to Graceland's internationalaudience,
kwela
the
pennywhistle sound on "You Can Call Me Al" is "cleaned up."
Its pitch is more exact and its tone production purer than that of the 1950s
counterpart; there are fewer glissandos; there is more precision in beat
alignment, and the timbre is not as "windy." (I will refer to this later.)
Furthermore, the instrument, played originally by Black street youths, is
played on Graceland by an exiled White South African.
The bass line of "You Can Call Me Al" and the way it combines with
the pennywhistle are also packed with layers of signs. Several indentifiable
features of the Zulu choral mbube style are apparent in this instrumental
music. Among them are the prominence of the bass, the call and response
pattern in the bass line, and the presence of traditional "vocal"effects, such
as glides. The mbube a cappella male choral style indexed here is rooted
in preindustrial Zulu society, according to Veit Erlmann (1987). Erlmann
argues, in fact, that the style has evolved with the transformation of that
society through proletarianization and is largely tied to migrant worker
identity (ibid.). Bass voices in mbube groups outweigh other parts significantly and contrast in range and sound with the high lead voice. In the song
"You Can Call Me Al" the bass guitar is mixed up to be a central element.
Taking full advantageof its fretless quality to play glissandos, the bass player
produces a countermelody which contrasts with the pennywhistle in range
and sound.
These mbube features come to Graceland through township instrumental jive, mbaqanga. Mbaqanga provides the basic backing on "YouCan Call
Me Al" and other tracks.Two important features of mbaqanga are that the
instrumentallines are often translationsof vocal lines and thatthe instrumental tracksare foregrounded in the mix along with the vocals. These features
facilitate the play between instrument and voice on equal terms. This interrelation between the vocal and instrumental parts in South African music
has been noted by Coplan. Citing David Rycroft,he suggests that among
other features, principles of instrumental music are conceived of as direct
extensions of vocal principles (ibid.:23). In the "YouCan Call Me Al" instrumental break, the bass and pennywhistle are also equally foregrounded in
a manner characteristicof mbaqanga.
The construction of this instrumental break embeds meaning in the
music in two semiotic steps. Step one involves a selection of signs from a
variety of style types. Then in step two, these signs-each bringing an historical complex of meanings-are combined in ways significant to the new
45
context (Graceland) to create a new, unique instance or token.6 A similar
process has been defined for two speech styles of the Shokleng Indians by
Urban (1985). Using these two semiotic steps, the musicians accomplish
stylistic integration on many different levels in Graceland. On a microlevel,
different features of one sound can be linked to different meaning complexes. For example, the pennywhistle in "YouCan Call Me Al" is linked to
kwela by the mere inclusion of the instrument, and simultaneously to a
Western contemporary context by its polished timbre. On a higher level,
one voice or instrumental part can be shaped by combining features of
different styles each with distinct associations. For example, mbube and
mbaqanga meaning complexes are compacted into the bass line. On a more
general level, the overall style is an innovative collage of other styles. For
example, the instrumental break in "You Can Call Me Al" as a whole, is
compacted with meanings associated with Simon's personal style and various
South African styles.
Language
In addition to integrating various musical styles, Graceland links and
integrates different linguistic styles. The careful integration of Zulu and
English in the lyrics (in those songs that include Zulu) and the semiotics
of the languages both contribute to Gracelands sense of collaboration. The
Zulu language, like the musical style, operates as a sign system indexing
Black South African traditions.
The song "Homeless" provides an example of linguistic integration.
This song comprises alternate Zulu and English sections. The first and third
sections are modeled on a traditionalZulu wedding song, the second, fourth,
and sixth are composed in English by Simon. The conclusion, a personal
Zulu exultation, is commonly used by LadysmithBlack Mambazo.A vocable
transition, "too loo loo" bridges the third and fourth sections.
The "too loo loo" vocables facilitate a linguistic transition from one
language to the other, and operate semiotically to reference Zulu tradition.
The linguistic transition, which functions to enhance the sense of stylistic
integration, occurs as follows. First, a smooth linguistic transition requires
the recognition on the part of the listener of "too loo loo" as English
vocables. They are vocables often used in some English language singing
6Atoken can in turn become a formal type, that is it can be taken up as a new
stylisticconvention
by successive artists. Two distinctive elements from Graceland that are currently being taken
up and circulated by South African musicians are (1) the sound quality of the synthesized
interjections in the Graceland song "You Can Call Me Al," and (2) the combination of this
with stark accordion and bass lines. For example, Bakithi Khumalo's "Takumba"on
Step on
the Bassline (1988), Sipho Mabuse's "Roomof Horror"and "JikaJive"on Chant the
of
Marching
(1988), and Merle Thompson's "Uli Themba Lethu"on Spirit Wind (1989).
46
traditionsfor their singability.7The English/non-Zuluspeaker will recognize
these sounds as being similar to the familiar "ooh" vocables sung by Simon
elsewhere on the album (such as in "UnderAfricanSkies" and "Diamonds
on the Soles of Her Shoes") and thus move from the unfamiliarZulu language
to familiar vocables (sung in a somewhat foreign style, but nevertheless
they can be made sense of as vocables), to familiarlanguage. On the second
level, however, these "too loo loo"s also index a style and a meaning linked
to Zulu tradition. In Zulu, "thululu" is used in wedding songs and refers
iconically to the beating of the heart (Ernest Mathabela,pers. com.). It is
an index of love or longing for relief, and an icon of the sound of the
heartbeat. "Thululu"is also a self-referential index. It refers to Ladysmith
Black Mambazo'sunique softer, smoother, and more "refined"isicathamiya
style which is termed isitbululu-"soft" music (Erlmann 1988). It is interesting that this section is represented by the English vocable spelling on the
record jacket-a hint at whose voice may be dominant on the album as a
whole, and of the audience to which it is directed.
The vocable "ih hih ih hih ih" in the final three sections serves as a
linguistic bridge similar to the "too loo loo." In this case, however, English
syntax plays a part in facilitatingthe transition from the familiarto the new.
The vocable is not a familiarmusical sound to the English/non-Zuluspeaker
but it is placed grammaticallyin the syntax of the English text:
Somebodysay ih hih ih hih ih
Somebodysing hello hello hello
Somebodysay ih hih ih hih ih
Somebodycrywhy why why?
It is carried through into the Zulu section where it occurs as interjections
in the text. This vocable, not usually heard in Zulu wedding songs, is found
in work and drinking songs. It is an iconic groan, expressing suffering,
misery, or the carrying of a burden (Ernest Mathabela,pers. com.). Some
of this meaning may be communicated to listeners unfamiliarwith the Zulu
traditional context through the iconicity of the vocal production of the
vocable with the vocal production of a heavy sigh and of utterancesexpressed
by a person moving a heavy weight.
These examples are only tokens of what is compacted into every aspect
of Graceland's composition and production whereby styles and their histories are mixed, layered, altered, and mediated by Simon. The complex
history of world music trafficking-described by Feld (1988a) and more
specifically for the South African-NorthAmericancase by Coplan (1985) and
Hamm (1988)-makes it difficult to draw a clear-cut distinction between
7"Too loo loo" is commonly heard in Irish and Anglo-Saxon folksong refrains. The vocables
are likely to index these traditions for the listener familiar with them.
47
the indexing of "Western"traditions by Simon and his fellow Americans
and the indexing of "South African"traditions by the African performers.
South African bassist Baghiti Khumalo, for instance, constantly shifts from
mbaqanga to distinctly African-Americanfunk-soul-reggae playing while
Simon's irregular vocal phrasing is a distinctive "African"feature. Clearly
this mixing of musicians and traditions complicates and intensifies the collaborative dynamic.
Noncollaboration
The foregrounding of the collaborative elements of the Graceland project does not deny that some features of the project also suggest a process
of appropriation, exploitation, and domination. There are certainly signs of
this. First and foremost, Simon profits financiallyfrom the project over and
above everyone else. Music and arrangements are co-credited on some
songs, as are the words of "Homeless" and of the introduction to "Diamonds
on the Soles of Her Shoes," but Simon holds the copyright on the album.
Additionally, as producer, principal songwriter, and lead vocalist he dominates the musicmaking process. As producer, he has authority over the
studio manipulation of the sound. As songwriter, he has control over the
lyric content. In line with Simon's idiosyncratic, often obscure poetic style,
Graceland's semantic content makes only oblique references to South Africa,
thus offering little grounding in the South African musicians' social space.
Simon's position as lead vocalist brings him further into the acoustic foreground, and in live performance into the spatial foreground. Frithhas noted
in this regard that the split between the star and the backing band is a
fundamental dynamic in pop music (see Frith 1981:64-69). This is played
out in the industry by assigning wage laborer status to band musicians and
elite artiststatus to the star (Feld 1988a:34).In the Graceland case, however,
the split also replicates and expresses the differentials in sociopolitical and
economic power represented by Simon and the Black South Africans-crucial differentials for the maintenance of apartheid.
The inconsistency in the co-crediting on Graceland also points to the
difficulties of attempting to do a genuinely collaborative project within the
restraints of the music industry. The music industry is organized in a way
that promotes hierarchical, competitive, profit-oriented work and does not
readily accommodate collaboration. Consider, for example, the way Billboard chart classification is organized around individuals, stars, and their
hits, not around groups and coauthorship. In the transnationalmusic industry
these relations are exacerbated by differentialsin the global power of nation
states and of multinational versus national music industries (see Wallis and
Malm 1984). Genuinely collaborative projects in which all participantscon-
48
tribute and benefit mutually cannot readily occur within the contemporary
international music industry without challenging the institution's power
structure.
Three songs on Graceland stand out as cover versions: "Gumboots"
covers a song by the Boyoyo Boys (music co-credited), "The Boy in the
Bubble" a song by the band Tao Ea Matsekha(also co-credited), and "That
Was Your Mother" covers "Josephine,"a song recorded by Good Rockin'
Dopsie (credited only to Simon on Graceland). First, is there a reason for
this discrepancy, and second, since Dopsie does not share the rights on
"ThatWas Your Mother,"why does Simon share the rights on "Homeless"
where his input was surely not more significantto the outcome than Dopsie's
was on "ThatWas Your Mother"?Feld (1988a:34-45) has suggested that an
answer to this lies in the more overt otherness of the African musicians'
contribution than of the Americanminorities. The Africans'otherness marks
their input much more clearly as their own. In addition, in the case of
"Homeless," the prioritizing of the text over the music is at issue. Simon
contributes to the lyrics of "Homeless" and therefore shares credits with
Shabalala,whereas Good Rockin' Dopsie does not contribute to the lyrics
of "ThatWas Your Mother"and is therefore not credited as coauthor. Over
and above these issues, the question remains whether all songs should
simply be co-credited since the distinctive features of the album are not
contributed solely by Simon (see Feld: ibid.).
SOCIAL COLLABORATION
I turn now to examine how Graceland's musical collaboration operates
as an indexical icon for sociopolitical collaboration in the South African
context; that is, in this instance the musical collaboration both points to and
is isomorphic with social collaboration. The nature of the relationship between these two types of collaboration is not of particularconcern here for
its own sake; rather, its significance lies in the way it allows one domain to
collapse into the other so that the two domains can be experienced as one
and the same-even if only for the duration of the music, or for moments
during the listening experience. (See Becker and Becker [1981] for a discussion of how each domain becomes identified with the other through iconicity.)
When Graceland's musical collaboration is positioned within a social
matrix, different "interpretive moves" (Feld 1984:7) take place on the part
of the listener in order to make sense of the sound. On hearing the album,
the listener is faced with a number of tasks:to recognize the style types that
have been drawn upon and sort out how they have been combined; to
49
experience the sound as a new entity and connect it to other entities; to
locate the sound in a field of sounds familiar to the listener; and so on. As
Feld writes, it is through "interpretivemoves" such as these that the listener
links formal stylistic components of music to his or her unique set of
accumulated musical and social experiences. These "interpretive moves"
give meaning to sound for particular listeners and social sets of listeners,
at particular historical moments. Their interpretation takes place within
dynamic "contextualizing music frames" (ibid.: 12); that is, the listener's
changing ideas about value (preferred form and content), identity (sameness
and difference), and coherence (organizing principles of social life)
(ibid.:13) frame and inform his or her interpretation.
South Africanlisteners make indentifiable "interpretivemoves" in relating their ideas about value, identity, and coherence to Graceland in order
to imbue Graceland with meaning. Their differentsociopolitical positionings
inform their evaluation or criticism of Graceland's collage. Graceland also
re-forms some notions about their positionings and reinforce others. Indeed,
South Africansrespond to the project principallyin three ways. It is embraced
by those who value the social collaboration it signifies. Conversely, it is
rejected by those who oppose the social collaboration it signifies. Some
South Africans,however, regard the signification of social collaboration as
irrelevant to the inherent value of the artwork and evaluate it in terms of
the success of its musical collaboration only.8
These responses relate to the listeners' sociopolitical positioning in
terms of race (Black or White), class (mostly middle class), language grouping (Afrikaner,English), and political orientation (conservative, liberal, radical). The discussion below includes the South Africanstate apparatusand
the liberation movement since all South African listeners are accountable
to one of these broadly defined institutions. It examines the commentary
presented in the mainstream media and music press; it does not attempt to
represent all South Africans. Furthermore, it articulates links between the
meaning of Graceland and those aspects of a particularlistener's sociopolitical positioning that are salient in the metacommentary;it does not attempt
to link Graceland's meaning systematically to each and every aspect of a
listener's sociopolitical positioning. The social categories that I enumerate
are fluid and crosscut one another in several places. Thus, for example,
where Black and White responses express and represent a similar issue,
they are described simultaneously even though the discussion is broadly
divided into White and Black categories.
8These observations are based on my reading and analysis of popular press coverage of the
Graceland project.
50
White South Africa
Nationalism
The first step almost all Southern AfricanGraceland commentators take
is to position Simon as an invasive outsider to South Africa.This is achieved
by applying colonial metaphors to Simon. He has been labeled variously as
"the benevolent musical coloniser" by a liberal White South Africanresident
(Wrench 1987), "thatLivingstone of the 80s" by another White reviewer in
a locally oriented nonracial music magazine (Rathbone 1987:3), a musician
"like some explorer or missionary in nineteenth centuryAfrica.... The European is the centre of attraction,the organiser, the teacher, the master" by
a Black journalist who boycotted the Zimbabwean Graceland concert
(Ndlovu 1987). The use of colonial metaphors to describe Simon is a
nationalist strategy.First, it draws a boundary around a group of people as
South Africans.Each case does not define which South Africansare included
in the group of "insiders,"but Simon is clearly excluded. Second, colonial
metaphors imply that the members of the circumscribed group are united
by more than shared culture. They also share a history and a "common
political will" (Sharp 1988:83) directed against a powerful intruder. In this
context Simon is powerful in that he has access to economic resources, to
the international music industry, and to the world stage, all of which are
coveted by South African musicians. Simon is in a position where he can
potentially exploit the South Africanssince he has access to these resources
and they, lacking access, recognize that some compromises on their part
are inevitable in order to gain it.
While the above three quotations all express nationalist sentiment, a
distinction between the White and Black responses is exhibited in the tone.
The first two quotations are exerpted from texts that favor Simon. After all,
hostility to Simon as a colonizer would imply a hostility on the part of the
authors to their own settler heritage and this in turn would imply a critique
of their own claims to be something that Simon is not vis-a-visSouth African
music. If they vehemently attackSimon for appropriatingBlack culture, then
by extension they vehemently attackthemselves on the same grounds. The
author of the third quotation, on the other hand, is an angered Zimbabwean
columnist who is juxtaposingSimon againstthe "politically-consciousmasses
of Southern Africa"(ibid.). In the context of the column,which includes a
critique of the Zimbabwean state's collaboration in the Graceland concert,
the "politically-consciousmasses of Southern Africa"are understood to be
Black people who support neither apartheid nor any institutions or groups
that cooperate with South Africa.The column opposes colonization to liberation, calls on Makeba and Masakelato account for their collaboration on
51
the Graceland promotional tour, and singles out Zimbabwe as a nation that
should set an example as to how to deal with Simon and other contravenors
of the cultural boycott.
All positive White South African commentary on Graceland indicates
that White South Africansshare one reason for their favoring of Graceland.
Irrespective of their political persuasions, they have embraced Graceland
because of the link it offers them to indigenous Black traditions. By expressing a claim on these traditions,they are able to legitimate their own identity
as local and to construct a history for this local identity. The cementing of
a local identity is a politically important move for Whites. By incorporating
traditions and other signs of indigenous, subordinated groups into their
own identity, they not only establish a place for themselves in South Africa,
but they also diffuse the potency of those traditions and signs for the subordinated groups. As these signs become emblems representing the nation
as a whole, their value in marking distinct identities within the nation
weakens. In this way the dominant faction reduces the potential of using
these signs in the process of resistance.
Three examples illustrate how White South Africansvalidate their local
identity through Graceland. First, a White journalistwrites the following in
a leftist-liberal newspaper:
Hey, Paul, come back with that accordian [sic]! Watchayou're doing with our
township guitar? Leave that bass-line alone! This is a record that constantly
makes you feel you've just been robbed of your most precious things. In some
cases they're possessions and inheritances that some of us didn't even know
were there. (Wrench 1986)
The "our" in this quotation most likely refers to a progressive nonracial
South African social group, which is the group to whom the newspaper is
pitched. Note the claim by Wrench to indigenous Black roots for South
Africansof any ethnic grouping, and the emerging construction of a formerly
unrecognized lineage ("... they're possessions and inheritances that some
of us didn't even know were there").
A second example of the White search for roots and identity in Africa
through music is offered by journalist Thomas writing about Graceland in
FairLady,a weekly magazine aimed primarilyat middle-class English-speaking White women. He writes:
African music is by no means hidden from our view, but many of us are only
now startingto discover, absurd as it may sound, that South Africanmusic exists.
And it's ours too, thriving as never before.... How long have my uncle, myself,
and thousands like us longed to feel that visceral connection with our land, so
easily celebrated by a simple thing like music? (Thomas 1987:72)
52
Thomas suggests that through local music, White South Africans(liberal and
middle-class in the context of this particularmagazine readership) can experience for the firsttime a direct intuitivetie to the land and, by implication,
to the country as a sociopolitical entity.These South Africansat last recognize
the value of local music and its prospects for the future. It is significant that
Thomas perceives and notes that the music is " thriving as never before"that it is changing, in his terms perhaps "developing," rather than dying or
being a static tradition stuck in the rural past. By claiming co-ownership of
the music, these South Africansfeel a sense of belonging to the land that
has produced it. The feeling here is realized through an idexical signifiying
process which ties music to the land. Music references the land. The connection between the two appears simple, direct, and natural.
Thomas then goes on to articulate ties to a national identity through
memory and personal history. Memories, like history, create a sense of
continuity for an individual. Usually this continuity unifies the individual
self with her or his personal past. Here however, the sense of unity created
embraces a larger social order. The process through which this happens is
essentially an iconic one as I will show below. Significantly,ties through
memory and history are most explicitly expressed in responses to Ladysmith
Black Mambazo, the Graceland group with the most direct connections to
old rural Black traditions. When Thomas reviewed a post-Graceland performance by Ladysmiththatwas held in a nonracial universityvenue patronized predominantly by White middle-class people, he wrote:
But more profoundthan[the newfoundWhiteappreciationfor Blacksounds],
muchmore,were the testimoniesof people touchedverydeeplyby Mambazo's
performance,by the recognitionthattheywere rootedimmovablyto whatthose
men on stage symbolised:SouthAfrica.Thatrich singing was the sound of
earliestmemory,of a nanny'squiet crooning... they'dfound confirmationof
whatit meantto be SouthAfrican.(ibid.)
In the final sentence of this excerpt, the singing of LadysmithBlackMambazo
is represented as iconic with that of a childhood "nanny."LadysmithBlack
Mambazo's sound indexes a national history in this context (as explained
above), while the "nanny" references the personal history of the White
listener. By collapsing these domains a step further, that is by making two
additional steps of inference, the national and personal histories are rendered iconic with each other. The personal history of the White listener is
understood to be part of the national history referenced by LadysmithBlack
Mambazo;LadysmithBlack Mambazo'shistory and the White listener's history become one and the same history. Through this constructed heritage,
the White South Africans referenced in Thomas's article can validate their
South Africanidentity. Note how they do this through affect,through feeling
intuitive connections between social and expressive domains as though the
53
similarities between the domains were natural and not constructed. The
potency of the music lies in the way and in the extent to which the listener
can feel meaningful connections to other experiences.
The link between the perceived naturalness and the potency of cultural
expression to which Thomas is responding has been explicated by Judith
and Alton Becker. They write that potency increases with increasing isomorphism between two domains, that is, as the two domains gain iconicity or
"naturalness.""This naturalness, which is an essential part of the aesthetic
experience, grows, at least in part, from the system of coherence which
binds together units in that form" (Becker and Becker 1981:212). In a case
study of the Kaluli, Feld develops a similar idea of music as "metaphorical
expression of one symbolic order that is instantlyand primarily feelingful"
(Feld 1984:16) to suggest that sound and social identity are cognitively and
affectively integrated "as a felt iconic wholeness" (ibid. 1988b:107). Feld
ties the intuitive and immediate capacity to collapse equivalent domains
(i.e., to create icons) to the way feeling and knowing occur as processes
that require each other to operate, as in Rosaldo's (1981) notion of "feelings
as embodied thought" or Williams's (1977) notion of "thought as felt and
feelings as thought."
Two points must be emphasized before offering a third example of the
generation of local White identity. First,the process of legitimating identity
through indigenous or folk traditions is by no means unique to South Africa.
Other instances have been documented in Southeast Asia (Anderson 1983),
Nazi Germany (Kamenetsky 1972), Central Europe (Karnoouh 1982), the
Soviet Union (Oinas 1978), Spain (Manuel 1989), and Eastern Europe (Silverman 1983), for example. The above authors have shown how national
self-consciousness has been strengthened through the appropriation of features of peasant history and folk tradition. Peasant/folkfeatures have been
used in these cases to construct and legitimate a national heritage and
identity.
Second, although the focus of the nationalist Graceland metacommentary illustrated above excludes Simon, it is nevertheless dependent on his
participation in the collage. His White presence provides access to the
unfamiliar through familiar sounds; it is unlikely this group of listeners,
White South Africans,would have been motivated to listen to indigenous
Black music of their own accord for its own sake.
A third example of how links to indigenous traditions in Graceland are
seized upon and how paths of inference are followed in order to tie these
traditions to social identity is offered by the response of the South African
"ideological state apparatus"(Althusser 1971). State support for Graceland
is suggested by the ample airplaythatthe album has received on state-owned
media. It is further evidenced by a report of LadysmithBlack Mambazo's
Grammy success that appeared in a ChristianNational Party-alignednews-
54
paper. In 1988 the group won a Grammy in the traditional folk category
for their post-Graceland album, produced by Simon. The report was reprinted in the state Bureau of Information'sSouth African Digest (18 March
1988:7).
State supporters, it seems, are proud to claim Ladysmith'sinternational
success as an achievement for South Africaand therefore as an achievement
for themselves. In order to do this, some bond must be forged that can
override the fact that they are supporting people who certainly do not
support the state. This is attempted by means of three rhetorical moves.
First, they acknowledge LadysmithBlack Mambazo as cultural ambassadors for South Africa. Each international tour is reported in the media,
usually along with information about its success and its value in promoting
or exposing South African music. They are represented as messengers of
goodwill exchanging information, entertainment, and cultural goods for
assistance. There are examples of similar treatment of other Graceland
participants:Stimela band leader RayPhiri'scriticism of the cultural boycott
on the grounds that, among other factors, "it denies the outside world an
opportunity to learn our culture and how can they help us if they don't
know our culture?"(quoted in Hlahla 1987) was pervasively reported in
South African mainstream dominant media. Here Phiri's presentation of
himself in this ambassadorial role is embraced and circulated.
The second rhetorical strategyinvolves the use of indicators (possessive
pronouns) which do not explicitly define the social group being referenced.
The lack of contextualization in snippets of reported speech such as the
above facilitatesthis strategy.Withoutadequate contextualization,the boundaries of the possessive pronoun ("our culture") are undefined so that the
reader is left to interpret who is included and excluded. This ambiguity
provides a useful mechanism for claiming shared possession, in this case
of culture. The press report which cites Phiri, also quotes LadysmithBlack
Mambazo leader, Joseph Shabalala,saying that the tour was "a marvellous
opportunity which gave the outside world a chance to hear our music"
(ibid.).
The third rhetorical move is to note the ties of the music groups to
indigenous folk traditions. Ladysmithis particularlyuseful here because it
has more direct ties to rural Black traditions than the other participating
local groups on the album.9
In sum, the state and other Graceland supporters construct a national
heritage for themselves by combining these interpretive moves: they fabri9Ladysmithwas awarded the Autumn Harvest Music Personalityof Personalities Award 1988 in
South Africafor "havingguided the South Africancommunity at large to a re-discovery of the
essence and richness of our indigenous sound" (Hlahla 1988).
55
cate an iconic relationship with the musicians and then assume ties to the
land for themselves through the musicians' traditions and history. In this
way, they are able to validate their positive evaluation of the album despite
the political orientation of the musicans vis-a-vis the state. Their evaluation
in turn legitimates their identity and, from their point of view, endorses
their vision of social cooperation without having to question their privileged
access to capital or their sociopolitical control. Culture is shared; history is
shared; land is shared; rights are shared.
Some Whites understand themselves to be incorporated into a group
because, from their perspective, they share the cultural resources of that
group. However, this does not mean thatthe speakers in the above quotations
intend this meaning. They do not necessarily accept the dominant White
strategywhich attemptsto make them, the speakers, represent the dominant
faction. Shabalalaand Phiri could be referring to Black culture, or to Zulu
culture (in the case of Shabalala),or to culture shared by some other social
configuration. Clearlythe concept of shared identity based on heritage and
culture, essentially a nationalist identity, is variously understood by different
South African social groups.
Conflicting claims to national identity are of course not uniquely South
African. (See again Anderson [1983], Kamenetsky [1972], Karnoouh [1982],
Oinas [1978], Manuel [1989], and Silverman [1983].) The questioning and
refiguring of national constellations occurs worldwide, but particularlyin
times and places of sociopolitical upheaval and reconstitution. This process
of national reconstruction involves the refiguring of social identities. Political
alliances are forged through claiming shared identity based on culture,
history, language, ethnicity, or geography. Indeed, in South Africa claims
on traditions are frequently used to draw boundaries around social groups
with common interests and to mobilize support for different political ends
(see Spiegel and Boonzaaier 1988).
Refinement
While political persuasion does not clearly influence the attitude of
White South Africanlisteners to the presence of indigenous Black traditions
in Graceland, the different responses of these listeners to the changes Simon
brings to those traditionsare informed by their specific political orientation.
White South Africanswho fall toward the more conservative end of the
political spectrum have embraced Graceland because of the changes (in
their terms "improvements")Simon has introduced to these very traditions,
such as the "clean"sound of the pennywhistle, the studio-produced clarity
and definition of sound, and the poetic English language lyrics. Simon "has
filtered the [South African] sound with his own style, lyrics and Western
56
influence to concoct a colourful collage which, while retaining its Afro
elements, makes them less raw,more flowy, more gentle. Andmost pleasant!"
(BS in Week-endMercuryOct 18,1986:10). There is an implied racistcritique
of the Other in this response. White South Africa'sprivileging of itself over
Black South Africain the Westernworld's "civilisingprocess" (Elias 1978:50)
results in a prejudice against Black expression in its traditional form and
context, even though that Black expression is simultaneously embraced for
the heritage it offers White South Africans.By branding Black South African
traditional music and those who play it as inferior and therefore in need
of reworking and updating,these WhiteSouth Africansvalidatetheir superior
sociopolitical positioning and their control over the inferior Other.
Clearly the extremely racist far right AfrikanerNationalists do not consider Black expression or internationalexpression a worthy topic for discussion. However, for less radical conservatives Graceland can reinforce or
justify the racist notion of Black culture as "raw,"as needing refinement,
which Western "civilization"can offer it. Whether this so-called refinement
is valued for the potential market it opens or just because it makes African
music more compatible with the listener's personal aesthetic does not alter
the factthatGraceland can be useful to conservativeWhiteSouthAfrica.10
The critique of crudeness in indigenous Black sound in the above
conservative evaluation contrasts with the appreciation expressed for its
integrityand artistryby those furtherto the left in political orientation.Johny
Clegg's1' appraisal of Simon's "blend" in Graceland stands as an example:
Simon's "particularblend is unique because he laid very contemporary pop
lyrics over an undiluted African backing" (cited in Thomas 1987:72). For
Clegg, part of Graceland's success lies in the way it maintains some indigenous aspects in their original form. Clearly, his evaluation of the music is
accompanied by respect for its makers.
Reform
Just as the different responses of White South Africans to the changes
Simon brings to indigenous traditionsare informed by their specific political
orientation, so are their visions of the social significance of these changes.
Conservative listeners, on the one hand, approach the collaboration as a
justificationof the present. White South Africanswho fall toward the more
10Accordingto the Graceland promotions manager at Gallo/Africa,which distributed the album
in South Africa,sales were high in some areas with a predominantly state-supportingAfrikaner
population (Ivor Haarburgerof Gallo/Africa,pers. com., Johannesburg, August 1987).
"Clegg is a White South Africanmusician and co-founder of Juluka, the first integrated band
with an indigenous blended sound which had a national following among Black and White
youth. He currently heads the band Savuka.
57
liberal end of the political spectrum, on the other hand, see Graceland's
collaboration as the gateway to the future. In both cases, the evaluation of
Graceland is linked to different visions of social reform.
The meaning and value of reform is a point of contention in South
African debate. Different interpretations reflect political alignment. Thus,
the ruling ChristianNational Party's[NP] "reform"strategies are embraced
by some South Africans,but rejected by others. Opponents to the right of
the National Partybrand these strategies as death-knells for White self determination in general and as sell-out moves for Afrikaner nationalism in
particular,while many to the left of the NP slate them as hegemonic control
mechanisms, that is, as petty apartheid concessions to the majority.
The left's response to NP "reforms"is shaped by their analyses of how
these policies are put into operation. Some consider that NP "reforms"
operate through cooptation of Black peoples. Those holding this view are
either demanding that the notion of reform be scrapped altogether since
it has been appropriated by the NP to denote what in fact is a perpetuation
of the status quo, or they are calling for "real" reform, in contrast to that
proposed by the NP. Others to the left consider that NP "reforms"present
loopholes that can be exploited in order to change the system through
incremental (re)appropriation of resources by the resistance. These various
visions of reform do not correlate categoricallywith sociopolitical positioning determined by class and race.
The South Africanstate offers the most pertinent example of how Graceland can be utilized to justify the present, that is, to substantiate the NP's
vision of "reform." The state has lauded Simon for showing "how silly
cultural sanctions are."12Simon certainlylends credence to the state'sclaims
that South Africais not isolated from the international community. He also
proves that racial cooperation can occur within the political system as it
exists today and that the ruling National Party'sso-called "reforms" are
creating a space for social integration. The state has therefore embraced
Graceland's success as a national achievement as described above. Note
how, by couching its discourse about reform in nationalist terms, the state
can avoid overt talk about race despite the fact that it is attemptingto reform
a social system based on racial categorization.
Two examples illustratehow more liberally aligned White SouthAfricans
see Graceland's collaboration as the gateway to the future. In the first, the
reviewer of Ladysmith'sand Stimela's post-Graceland albums uses an international gauge for quality and presents a picture of change for a better
'2The opposed view is articulated by the Zimbabwean journalist quoted above who considers
collaboration with Simon to be a breach of the culturalboycott. For him, collaboration signifies
so-called "reform"that operates through co-opting black South Africans.
58
future. The review appeared in Bits, a progressive music monthly which
raised such issues as the cultural boycott and aimed at promoting local
music locally.
Undoubtedlythese two groupsare amongSouthAfrica'sbest,and the factthat
the spotlightof internationalrecognitionhas fallenon both... ratherthanany
of the many other majortalents in this countryis certainlya measure of
that.... So, you can look, listen, and then decide whetherto hang aroundin
traditionalLadysmith
territory,or catchthe slow-trainup to the new soundsof
Johannesburg[withStimela],but eitherwayyou won'tlose. And
contemporary
witha presentas richasthis,norcanthefutureof SouthAfricanmusic.(Rathbone
1987:5)
A second example is provided by Thomas, whose writing I have discussed above. In the same article in FairLadyhe describes how the fusion
of White popular music with indigenous Black popular music is breaking
down social barriers, and how as South AfricanBlack music moves out of
the townships, out of Black working-class performance settings, out of the
servant quarters in White suburbs, and into liberal middle-class (nonracial)
venues and record stores in the city centers, it is met by an increasing White
audience seeking roots, identity, and a future in Africa.He writes:
I thinkwe conditionedourselvesto thinkthis music[urbanBlackmusicheard
on Blackradiostations]wasn'tours;our parentsdidn'thaveto tell us. Instead
we mimedLedZeppelinguitarsolos on our tennis rackets.
Now, of course, we can hear somebody like Alec "Om"Khaolimix his
townshipjivewith a guitarowingmuchto the howlingghostsof LedZeppelin.
Ouridentities-one African,the otherEuropean-arecollidingas neverbefore,
and the richessof the music is only one positiveresult.(Thomas1987:73)
Thomas'sarticle is full of talk of social reform coupled with national identity,
of incremental change starting with shifts in Whites' evaluation of Black
expression.
Music can evoke shared affect,and Thomas seems to feel that this shared
affect can provide the basis for building a sense of community. Clearly he
is inspired by a liberal belief in the principle of reform, signified by Graceland and other local music and expressed in the following review of a
post-Graceland appearance of LadysmithBlack Mambazo in Cape Town.
Cynicsmightscoff at the sight of a relativelytiny proportionof the relatively
Black
tinyWhitepopulationof SouthAfricasuddenlyfindingoutwhyLadysmith
Mambazois the most populargroupin the country,butwe haveto startsomewhere.Thesheersharingjoyon people'sfacesas theycheeredthe magnificent
Mambazoat the Baxter[Theater]should haveput all cynicismto rest.On the
most basiclevel possible,a thinglike simplewarmappreciationis thatmuchmaligned,but undeniablytrue, "stepin the rightdirection."(ibid.:73)
59
Aesthetic distancing
The third type of response to Graceland, namely to disregard the significance of social collaboration and instead to evaluate the success of Gracelands musical collaboration in terms of its autonomous artistic value, is
almost solely a response of White South Africans. I present this response
as a type, that is, it does not occur in real instances in its pure form, but is
colored by other features related to the listener's social positioning. Listeners
do not evaluate Graceland in terms of the values of "good art"only. Rather,
they are interwoven with other values, such as nationalist sentiment.
The process of abstracting musical expression from its context of creation is an essential component of the bourgeois aesthetic principle which
values art as inherently transcendent and autonomous. According to Bourdieu's notion of "aesthetic distancing" (Bourdieu 1984:34), recognition of
"good art" requires a detachment on the part of the witnesser or listener
of the mode of representation from the object represented and of the form
from the function. Furthermore, it is ideally a disposition of this class, he
writes, to be able to take the aesthetic viewpoint even on objects that in the
bourgeois value system/world view are understood to be common, something other than (high) art (ibid.:40). The South Africans who engage in
these "interpretivemoves" in regardto Graceland are predominantlyWhites
who possess high economic and cultural capital.
Once its political implications have been diffused or trivialized, Graceland can be circulated as an autonomous artworkand evaluated principally
in terms of its formal elements. A conservative Afrikanerjournalist, statealigned Kerneels Breytenbach, provides a fine illustration of this: he has
embraced Simon and Graceland precisely because they are nonpolitical.
He dismisses international antiapartheidprotest music as "junk,"saying "if
only foreign musicians would go and learn from Paul Simon!"(Breytenbach
1986:9).13It is "junk,"following Bourdieu, because as protest music it is
functional.14
Breytenbach's aesthetic is framed by strong nationalist sentiment. He
praises Black and Afrikanerpopular music for exhibiting the characteristics
of "good music" that protest music lacks. Local English expression, which
is not stylistically rooted in South Africa, is excluded from the discussion.
Breytenbach categorizes English-speakingmusicians as foreign or different
(Other), based no doubt on the fact thatthe South AfricanEnglishpopulation
lacks a strong nationalist history in contrast to Afrikanersand Blacks. This
historical background informs his selection of "good music."
13"Snert.... Het hulle maar by Paul Simon gaan leer!" (my translation in text).
14Breytenbach'sarticulation of art and politics as two separate domains echoes Simon's own
bourgeois view.
60
Breytenbach selects three local acts-two Black and one Afrikaner-in
his celebration of "good music." He chooses Stimela for its refinement and
freedom from "political obtrusiveness";15Black musician Hotstix Mabuse
for "no doubt the closest to perfect synthesis of local musics, which include
Western pop";16and Afrikanersinger Goosen, whose record the "palidBrits
just won't be able to understand, and it is their loss."17 Note the aesthetic
value in the first, the suggestion of musical synthesis as iconic of social
synthesis-with Western elements specifically included-in the second, and
the exclusion of the Other (that is, the English-speakingSouth Africans)on
the basis of style and language, in the third.
Black South Africa
I turn now to Black South Africa,where the notion of collaboration is
treated somewhat differently.While White South Africansgenerally respond
to Graceland as representing and expressing domestic nonracial (or for
some more specifically interracial)collaboration, Black South Africanshighlight the internationalaspect of the collaboration. Even though many Whites
position Simon as an outsider, they subsequently focus on the interracial
aspect of Graceland as opposed to the international and view this in terms
of what it represents about domestic politics. This view includes a nationalist
move by which Whites position themselves locally using the sign Graceland.
Black South Africans,on the other hand, tend to focus on the collaboration
between Black South Africans and Paul Simon, an American with prestige,
wealth, and professional musical experience. This focus on international
collaboration holds true for both the supporters and critics of Graceland.
Supporters value Graceland for the access it provides to resources and
audience as well as for its social collaboration and musical synthesis. In
addition, some supporters counteract the White nationalistmove by reclaiming the oppositional value of indigenous Black expression represented by
and in Graceland. Critics, on the other hand, brand the project on two
fronts: it exploits and co-opts Black South Africansand their cultural expression, and it contravenes the cultural boycott.
15"politiekeopdringerigheid" (my translation in text).
waarskynlikdie volmaakste sintese van plaaslike musiek... en dit sluit Westerse pop in"
(my translation in text).
17"Ditis 'n plaat wat die bleek Britte genadiglik nie sal kan verstaan nie, en dit is hul verlies"
(my translationin text). The style-land-nation-identityiconic complex is also evident in Breytenbach's criticism of internationalantiapartheidprotest music. One reason he gives for its failure
is its "patheticattempt to recreate a South Africanstyle in cold London" ("... patetiese poging
om 'n soort Suid Afrikaansemusiekstylto herskep in koue Londen"[my translation;Breytenbach
1986]).
16"...
61
Support
International exposure
Black South African commentary that supports the project, supports it
largely because of the international exposure it offers. To reach the world
stage for Black South African artists is both a politically and professionally
motivated goal. Politically, the opportunity an international project like
Graceland affords them to expose apartheid through song, talk, interviews,
and other promotional activities is obvious. Professionally,Graceland positions the musicians in a space which facilitatesfuture contacts in the industry
for themselves and for fellow musicians at home. This significance is articulated by Ray Phiri in Pace, a South Africanmonthly magazine with a Black
readership:
We are aware of the role we have to play in a bid to make our kind of music
accepted by the world.... Now that Simon is offering us an importantplatform,
we have to use it properly in glorifying African music and making Americans
aware that there are many good artists in this part of the world. (Ray Phiri,
leader of the main South Africanbacking band on Graceland, cited in "PSteams
up with Stimela,"Pace June 1985:87)
In other ways, political and professional aspirationsare integrallyconnected.
Through Simon, South Africanmusicians are able to reach the international
marketwhile bypassing the South Africanstatewith its repressive censorship,
limited access to capital and to media channels, and its restraintsupon Black
business. They are able to prove that they can make their voices heard. They
can be artisticallyand financiallysuccessful without the help of the state, or
even despite the limitations it imposes on them. Through such a project,
Black musicians are able to gain some independence from the state in this
particular domain.
These issues provoked a response in a London Times editorial, critical
of protesters picketing the London Graceland concert. Although somewhat
patronizing in tone, the excerpt below illustrates an awareness of the interconnection between political and professional activity for South African
musicians. What constitutes political activityin this context is framed by the
Times'sstance of "constructiveengagement" toward the SouthAfricanstate.
The arts cannot flourish in isolation. There are talented young Black musicians
in South Africa who need room in which to communicate and expand. The
demand for their skills, which "Graceland"is helping to create would also build
bridges between them and young people abroad-stronger bridges than any
politicians could construct.... Blacks in SA need helping in positive, practical
ways, and Graceland could have become-indeed, could yet become-a symbol
of the hope which this might bring. (Editorial,Times[London]7 April 1987:15)
62
For BlackSouth Africanmusicians,the internationalsuccess of the Graceland project is also important for the prestige and popularity it brings at
home. The fact that international success is taken as the gauge for achievement domestically is partly a consequence of the structure of the global
music market, as Wallis and Malm (1984) have pointed out. Since the U.S.
provides more economic capital for production and consumption than any
other nations do, the transnational record industry is geared primarily to
U.S. interests. U.S. interests therefore dominate and shape the domestic
music production in countries like South Africawhere aspiring musicians
and record companies are desperate for the financial gains an international
break promises.
Those South Africanswho accept the international gauge also uphold
Keil's thesis that the legitimation of a style necessarily occurs through the
media of the dominant faction (Keil 1985:124). Indeed, the international
success of Graceland seems to have brought both attention and value to
South Africanmusic domestically and globally. Numerous international releases of South Africanmusic not mediated by Simon or any other Western
artistshave followed Graceland.18 This suggests thatGraceland could indeed
have been a definitive opening for South African music onto the world
market.
Domestic revitalization
The post-Graceland revival and promotion of indigenous sound within
the South Africanmusic industry is one indication of the new value assigned
to Black music. Recent domestic support for indigenous sound (Zulu
masakanda and mbube for instance) in South Africa is directly related to
the demands of the internationalmarketfor "ethnic"(i.e., different or other)
popular music and not for imitations of Western popular music. This is a
source of tension that is played out over the meaning and value of Black
music traditions.
On the one hand, members of the subordinate group, Black South
Africans, are assisting in the maintenance of the status quo by providing
appropriate "ethnic" cultural material for international consumption. On
the other hand, however, they are challenging the status quo by hailing the
value of their own expression. Prioritizingand promoting native values and
rejecting the internalization of the values of the dominant group is a significant step toward counteracting the hegemonic (see Keil 1985:125-26). Re8For example: Hugh Masakela Tomorrow (Warner Brothers), Miriam Makeba Sangoma
(Warner Brothers), LadysmithBlack MambazoShaka Zulu (WarnerBrothers), MahlathiniThe
Lion of Soweto (Earthworks),and compilations Soweto Never Sleeps (Shanachie), TheHeartbeat
of Soweto (Shanachie), Thunder Before Dawn (Earthworks),and Homeland (Rounder).
63
storing value to indigenous music, then, is one step toward strengthening
resistance against the ruling faction in South Africa. Indeed, it is one step
that counters the White South Africannationalistic move which attempts to
incorporate Whites into the local Black history and community. That is,
while some Whites attempt to construct a national consensus of meaning
and feeling about Graceland, some Blacks arrest it to use in marking their
identity as separate from the dominant White faction.
In this regard, perhaps the South African musicians have successfully
"put Simon to work" for their long-term benefit. They certainly participated
in the project with long-term benefits in mind. As RayPhirisays:"Ourpeople
sent us to the lion's den; they want us to bring back the lion's skin, and we
will do that" (Lloyd 1987).
Clearly,Graceland's Black South Africanmusicians and their community
are not engaged in the project naively. As well as having a keen awareness
of the motivation for international exposure, they recognize the necessity
to rework indigenous sounds so that they are appealing and accessible to
international audiences. As Hugh Masakelasays, "People all over the world
dig the sound of a pennywhistle or a township guitar. You just have to
translate it a little. Just one sentence and away it goes" (Hugh Masakelain
Hyde 1987:31). This keen sense of strategy does not detract from the value
of South Africanmusic in the lives of its makers. Rather,internationalrecognition and increased independence (albeit only a little autonomy in little
ways) from the South Africanstate seems to have brought a new recognition
of the value of indigenous music. As journalistShuenyane writes, respecting
one's music "is an encouraging step toward respecting one's self'
(Shuenyane 1985:89).
Internationalization: indigenization
The dialectic between the value of musical "indigenization," i.e., of
localizing sounds and their meaning, and of musical "internationalization"
places collaborative projects like Graceland in a pivotal position politically,
professionally and stylistically.With regard to stylistic "indigenization" on
the one hand, ties to Black South Africantraditions and the past are desired
by people like Shuenyane. These are ties that establish and express a sense
of local collectivity. Expressive culture from this angle is a repository of
shared feelings, history, and collective identity that marks the social group
as a distinct entity bound by common will as opposed to coercion. With
regard to stylistic "internationalization"on the other hand, integration into
national and global political and market systems is desirable and necessary
for Black musicians and their community. Expressive culture from this angle
is part of a gigantic complex system of traffickingof sounds and signs that
64
are presentations to the outside world of the collectivity's identity in the
form of commodities.
The drive for "internationalization"has two trajectories in the Black
South Africancase. The first refers to the recognition and remuneration that
results from international exposure; that is, it refers to economic rewards
for artistic success within the global market system and to the concomitant
prestige for the artist. Working with Simon can achieve this goal. Some
Black music entrepreneurs, like StanNkosi, president of the BlackMusicians'
Association and owner of a recording company in Johannesburg at the time
of Graceland's release, therefore support Simon's act. Nkosi offers two
related reasons for his support. First, the Graceland project exposes the
neglect of Black music by local White music capital.Black music is neglected
according to Nkosi because its artisticvalue and economic potential are not
recognized. Second, it provides the capital lacked by Black South Africans
to promote themselves (interview 30 June 1987).
The second trajectoryis politically and ideologically based. It refers to
the drive for pan-Africanlinks that can be expressed, drawn upon, invigorated, and recreated through music. Perhaps the most pertinent illustration
of this dynamic is the intricate interweaving of the distinctive styles and
political ideologies of James Brown with Fela Kuti over the years. Their
musical relationship has inspired some of both these artists' distinctive
sounds and combinations of sounds. (See Feld 1988a:37.)
As South Africanmusic critic Makhayawrites in reporting the formation
of a South African Black Musicians'Association in 1986 (subsequently disbanded), it is through Black music and musicians that "Blackvalues, ideas,
beliefs, norms, attitudes, customs, aspirations... will continue to be internalised and internationalised within the Black individual and the Black
nation" (Makhaya1986:10). In the South Africancase, clearly, working with
Simon cannot directly fulfill this goal, although it could open doors for
future collaborations. Nkosi, for instance, voiced a preference for assistance
from African Americans (Stevie Wonder and Quincy Jones in particular)
rather than from Simon.
Opposition
Because the presentation of identity through sound is subject to commodification, it risks losing or diffusing the meanings associated with those
sounds for that collectivity. The dilemma is articulated by Whitebooi, a
colored South Africanmusic critic. In his assessment of 1986 music events,
of which one highlight was the international attention directed at South
African music due to Simon, Black musician Sipho Hotstix Mabuse is reprimanded for shaping his music for an American audience and "almost
65
forgetting about us" (Whitebooi 1986).19 The danger of selling out to an
international audience, that is, of incorporating oneself into the dominant
class and discarding the support system and community thatfacilitatedartistic
and economic success, is expressed in political terms by the then-imprisoned
ANCleader WalterSisulu.Addressinga writer'sforum, he warns his audience:
You cannotremainaloof fromthe politicalstrugglesof [your]community.You
but yourwritingwill die becauseit is not
maybecome famousinternationally,
rooted in the people.... We are allowingour politicaldevelopmentto outstrip
our culturaldevelopment,a mistakewe should not make-we can see the
resultsin otherThirdWorldcountries.Letus not createa breedinggroundfor
Unitas,MNRsand Contras.(Badela1987:3)
Some Black leftists have taken this fear of artists deserting their own
communities in pursuit of success to the point of being opposed to any
White or imperialist interference in artisticproduction. They condemn projects that require any kind of sanctioning by or cooperation with the South
Africanstate apparatus.Graceland, of course, does in part depend on White
and state approval: it is sold in White-owned record stores; it has received
ample airplayon state-owned radio stations;it has had state-owned television
coverage; for its concert in Zimbabwe in 1987 sound equipment and technicians were brought from South Africa and ticket outlets were set up in
major cities. Thus some Blacks in Southern Africa as well as antiapartheid
radicals in the U.S. have opposed the project.
The Liberation Movement
Ironically, the interests of the AfricanNational Congress [ANC]and the
broader liberation movement were not really served by Graceland at the
time of its release and during the promotional tours. The ANC and its
supporting organizations appear from the media commentary to have been
thrown into confusion over the issue of Graceland's value to the resistance.
ANCsupporters voiced various opposing opinions on Graceland, all claiming ANCbacking. The position of the PanAfricanistCongress [PAC]was also
contested. While the PACwas supporting Simon for his "helping oppressed
people by exposing their culture" (Tannenbaum 1987), the U.N. Special
Committee AgainstApartheidwas announcing that anyone buying the album
was violating the trade embargo on South Africa.While the U.S. Black Consciousness Movement was supporting Graceland because it demonstrates
there is "more to our people than just sufferers"(ibid.), the then-imprisoned
19"
'n Taai klap aan Sipho Mabuse omdat hy na Burn Out geprobeer het om musiek te maak
waarvandie Amerikanershou, en ons (byna) vergeet het" (my translationin text). It is unclear
in this quotation whether the "us" refers to progressive South African music fans in general
or specifically to Black South Africans.
66
ANCleader WalterSisulu was calling on South Africanartistsnot to "become
the old spit in Paul Simon's mouth, something that he has swallowed and
is now reproducing according to his own taste" (Badela 1987). Note how
this debate wrestles with two popular contemporary conceptions of culture
mentioned above, that is, a sense of culture as normative, a repository for
collective affect and ideology; and of culture as a commodity circulated
within the global market system.
All this controversy is directly related to the confusion over the cultural
boycott as a political strategy and how and when to implement it. This is
extremely problematic considering the interconnectedness of stylistic revitalization and innovation to the flow of sounds and meaning by means of
international media discussed by Feld and Keil (Feld 1988b; Keil 1985).
Nevertheless, the cultural boycott seems to be taking on special significance
for antiapartheidactivists and for the South Africanstate as economic sanctions and boycotts isolate the regime with increasing success and as oppression in South Africaintensifies. As Louis Nel, former Ministerof Information,
implied in an interview, reaching an internationalaudience through cultural
expression becomes an increasingly significant option for the state as other
channels are blocked one after another. International activists have also
come to enlist culture into the struggle by encouraging the boycott of all
apartheid practices and expression. Their motivation, rather than being fear
of isolation as in the former case, is that other forms of protest are proving
insufficient-all possible strategies must be employed in all possible spheres
of resistance to advance the struggle.
Prior to the Graceland controversy, there had been no urgent need for
the liberation movement to lay out a consistent and working policy to
monitor the flow of cultural and intellectual production in and out of South
Africa.Debate centered on specific events and boycott contraventions rather
than on the aims, scope, and gains of the boycott. This lack of definition
about the terms has been widely exposed by Graceland. Graceland seems
to have raised these issues and pointed to structural weaknesses in the
liberation movement.
The controversy also has implications for politically engaged musicians
in South Africa.Graceland musician RayPhiriexpresses how the controversy
impacts his personal political and professional involvement:
My records are being banned in SouthAfricaand then suddenlysomeone
comes out and says we don't want you to play that person's records here
[overseas]. Then who am I supposed to run to? Pretoria?The Anti-Apartheid
Movement?the ANC?("Simon Denies Apologising to ANC"TheCitizen [Pretoria]
January 1987. No author)
Having fueled the debate, the Graceland project seems to have done
little if anything to help solve the problems. Various branches of the liber-
67
ation movement, however, have taken up the task of refining the principles
concerning the culturalboycott. They have also begun to construct a working
policy for its implementation. The groundwork for this was initiated at two
international meetings, the Culture of Another South Africaconference and
festival in Amsterdam, and a U.N.-sponsored symposium of artists and diplomats held in Athens. Various organizations within the Mass Democratic
Movement in South Africa (Congress of South African Trade Unions
[COSATU]cultural wing and South AfricanMusiciansAlliance, for example)
continue to be actively engaged in this debate.
These debates, like much of the White discourse, exhibit a nationalist
thrust. Here, however, talk of social reform is phrased in terms of national
liberation; national identity is phrased in terms of nonalliance with the state.
For instance, at the same time as the state was embracing Graceland, an
ANCpress officer warned against always equating South Africanesswith the
state apartheid apparatus.This statement appeared in response to international calls to boycott South African cultural production, initiated by the
Graceland controversy.
As well as debating the problematics of Graceland, the resistance has
reworked and incorporated aspects of the music into its cultural repertoire
for its own oppositional purposes. At the National Conference of COSATU
in July 1989, for instance, the COSATUculturalgroup ended an mbube song
about equal rights with a choreographed routine. This was danced to the
vocables and melody sung on Graceland by LadysmithBlack Mambazo to
conclude the song "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes."
CONCLUSION
Graceland has alerted South Africans to the richness and currency of
Black South Africanexpression. Interest in other local music not mediated
by Simon seems to have followed interest in Graceland. On the one hand,
this opens up opportunities on the local market for Blacks, since most
record companies, majorrecord outlets, and performance venues are owned
by Whites. On the other hand, Graceland encourages the appropriation of
Black music by White South Africaas a means of establishing a WhiteAfrican
(as opposed to colonial) identity. Keil has argued for a dialectic relation in
the appropriation of Black music by the dominant market. He notes that
one effect of the appropriation of Black music and the exploitation of Black
musicians by White musicians and entrepreneurs in the U.S. in the 1950s
and 1960s was that it encouraged the revitalization of Black music and
promoted it in the form of the soul movement (Keil 1966:185-86). He has
also argued for a flip side to the dominant faction's motivation behind this
appropriation. He suggests that the dominant faction regulates and controls
68
the oppressed faction by containing its identity in stereotypes which are
incorporated into the dominant discourse and reproduced as a discourse
of consensus and (imagined) consolidation (Keil 1985:120-21).
Hall also articulates this dialectic: to regulate and incorporate subordinate groups, the dominant class is forced to reformulate itself constantly so
that its core values are not threatened. In reformulating itself it necessarily
takes on some features of the subordinate groups that it suppresses. While
the ruling faction reduces the oppositional potential of a sign, in this case
the sign Graceland, by attempting to construct a national consensus of
meaning and feeling about it, subordinate factions arrest it to mark their
identity as separate from that of the ruling faction. Subordinate factions
claim or reclaim the sign as their own and as a sign of resistance to domination. This dialectic manifests itself as a struggle over the meaning of the
sign (Hall 1979:337). The plurality of South African claims made for and
about the sign Graceland stands as a pertinent example.
In conclusion, there are patternsin the way the sociopolitical orientation
of these interest groups relates to how various groups evaluate the presentation of Graceland as a collaborative project. The first significantdimension
relates to the transcendency of musical meaning. In one view, music is
regarded as a universal language that bridges cultural barriers.The diametrically opposed view states that music can only be understood in culturally
specific terms. Each listener must locate him or herself somewhere between
these two dimensions.
A second dimension refers to the stylistic revitalization versus appropriation argument articulatedby Keil (1985,1987:4), Feld (1988a), and Frith
(1987). Here the question is whether or not royalties and respect, as represented by copyright, are sufficient compensation for the use of musical
ideas, or if this constitutes cultural and economic rip-off.
The convergence of these two discourses is not clear-cut.One prominent
point of intersection is determined by class alliance. Those with higher
capital tend to support the idea of music as a universal language and the
legitimacy of the notion of copyright. This tendency can be expected: the
ruling class is unlikely to reflect on its domination, but rather will tend to
favor Graceland as benign collaboration.
Another interacting dynamic refers to listeners' specific political orientations toward South Africa. Does the listener support or reject sanctions
against South Africa?Does he or she support or reject the South African
state? Here political alignment rather than class alliance is significant. In
radical leftist sectors the collaboration that is manifested in Graceland tends
to be criticized as sell-out behavior. One can expect that right wing racists
will not support interracialGraceland either. If,however, these conservatives
rate high in cultural capital-that is, if their values and social position fall
69
within the leisure class and accordingly they value music as transcendentthey may well support the project as an apolitical purely artistic endeavor
despite its racial mixing. The extent to which collaboration is favored by a
wide range of listeners between the radicals and reactionaries is not neatly
aligned along a continuum from left to right wing. This is due largely to
the complicated issues pertaining to the cultural boycott-not all people to
the left of the National Party support sanctions or boycotts, especially of
intellectual and cultural production.
Furthermore, where cross-cultural, nonracial, intraclass collaboration
is most salient to the listener, this collaboration may be understood in quite
opposing but equally positive terms by pro- and antistate listeners: to the
one it is a sign that racialcooperation is possible within the apartheidsystem;
to the other it is a sign of resistance to that system.
Graceland is a composite polysemic sign vehicle. The political discourse
surrounding and embedded in the album is as complicated as the musical
construction. The listener interprets the layers of musical and sociohistorical
meaning packed into the grooves. The metacommentaryconstructed around
the album forms an additional sign vehicle. The listener then mediates the
listening experience through the culturally determined political discourse
about social reform and national identity to establish for him or herself a
significant relationship to Graceland. Graceland's enormous success can
thus be accounted for by examining the paths of inference that connect
different sets and layers of musical signs with other sets and layers of signs
for specific listeners in specific spatio-temporal locations. The discourse of
politics is not a separate domain with its exclusive meanings. Neither is the
musical domain. The one is embedded in the other. The political is simultaneously articulatedwith the musical in the international market to create
a transnationalflow of meaning.
As the Boy in the Bubble on Graceland sings "These are the days of
lasers in the jungle/Lasersin the jungle somewhere/Staccato signals of constant information...." To which Ray Phiri has the response on Stimela's
album Look, Listen and Decide "Who'sfooling a who?/who's fooling a me?/
are you fooling a me or am I fooling a you?/Who'susing a who?/who's using
a me?/are you using a me, baby, or am I using a you?..."
It is the timing and placing of Graceland in South Africa in the 1980s
as well as the prominence and problematics of South Africa'spositioning
within the global system that has made Graceland controversial and, along
with the artistic and technical skills of its makers, the winner of the 1986
Record of the Year Grammyaward. Graceland illustrates that the meanings
of transcultural musical styles are located at the conjunction between the
multileveled global economic and political system and the local lived experience of specific creators and interpreters.
70
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to all who read and commented on versions of this paper. I am especially
grateful to Gerard Behague, Steve Feld, Laurie Graham, FrankMagne, Tom Turino, and Greg
Urban for their valuable contributions.
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1987b Review of Stimela-Look, Listen and Decide (G.R.C.) and LadysmithBlack Mambazo-Zibuyinhlazane (G.R.C.).Bits 3(March):5.
Rathbone, Gary, and Charles Talbot
1987 "Gracelands."Bits 3(March):6-8.
Shuenyane, Morakile, ed.
1985 "Musicin Exile." Pace 8/12:89-94.
Tannenbaum, Rob
1987 "UN Group AttacksPaul Simon." Rolling Stone 493(12 February):11.
Thomas, Jeremy
1987 "The Sound of Roots Growing."Fairlady 1 April:72-73.
Thomson, Garner
1987 "BlackMambaso 'One of SA'sTreasures.'" Pretoria News 2 February.
Tissong, Michael
1987 "Arti.tsTell of Tour." TheStar (Johannesburg) March18. Reprinted in South African
Digest 3 April 1987.
Whitebooi, Melvin
1986 "Die jaarwat was." Ekstra-Rapport(Capetown) 14 December:4.
Wrench, Nigel
1986 "Simon'sWhimsySpringsSARoots."WeeklyMail(Braamfontein) 12 September:18.
1987 "Homesick Soweto Blues in Harare."WeeklyMail (Braamfontein) 20 February.
Unsigned articles
BS. Review of Graceland. Week-endMercury (Durban) 18 October 1986:10.
"PaulSimon Teams Up with Stimela."Pace June 1985:87.
"The Picketing of Graceland." Editorial in Times (London) 7 April 1987:15.
"Simon Denies Apologising to ANC."Citizen (Pretoria) January 1987.
"LadysmithBlackMambazoWins Grammy."In SouthAfrican Digest 18 March1988:7. Reprinted
from the Citizen (Pretoria).
Television reports
McNeil LehrerReport. PBS 25 February 1987.
73
Interviews
Louis Nel, 31 August 1987, Pretoria, RSA.
Stan Nkosi, 30 June 1987, Johannesburg, RSA.
Albums
Art of Noise. Yebo. Polygram. 1989.
Records EI-46971. 1988.
Belafonte, Harry.Paradise in Gazankulu. EMI-Manhattan
Bush, Kate. Sensual World. Columbia. 1989.
Copeland, Stewart. The Rhythmatist.A&MRecords AMLS65084. 1985.
Gabriel, Peter. So. Geffen Records GHS 24088. 1986.
LadysmithBlack Mambazo.Shaka Zulu. Warner Brothers 25582. 1987.
The Heartbeat of Soweto. Shanachie Records 43051. 1988.
Homeland: A Collection of Black South African Music. Rounder 5009. 1987.
Khumalo, Bakhiti.Step on the Bassline. Flame (V) 4063241. 1988.
Mabuse, Sipho Hotstix. Chant of the Marching. Gallo/GRCHUL40185. 1988.
Mahlathini.The Lion of Soweto. Earthworks/VirginRecords America 90867. 1987.
Makeba,Miriam.Miriam Makeba: Sangoma. Warner Brothers 25673. 1988.
Masakela,Hugh. Tomorrow. Warner Brothers. 1987.
Rolling Stones. Steel Wheels.Warner Brothers. 1989.
Simon, Paul. Graceland. Warner Brothers 25447-1. 1986.
Soweto Never Sleeps:Classic Female Mbaqanga Jive. Shanachie Records 43041. 1986.
Stimela. Look, Listen,and Decide. Gallo/GRCHUL40109. 1986.
Talking Heads. Remain in Light. Sire Records 6RK6095. 1980.
.Naked. Fly/Sire Records 9 25654-1. 1988.
Thomson, Merle. Spirit Wind. Umkhonto Records MLP001. 1989.
Thunder Before Dawn. Earthworks/irgin Records America 90866. 1987.

Society for Ethnomusicology - Introduction to World Music

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