Christopher Hennessy

I don't like the idea that people who aren't adolescents make records. Adolescents make the best records. Except for Paul Simon. Except for Graceland. He's hit a new plateau there, but he's writing to his own age group. Graceland is something new... That's just as good as

"Blue Suede Shoes," and that is a new dimension.1

For this essay, I have chosen to examine the track Homeless by Paul Simon and Joseph Shabalala which is on Paul Simon's controversial album, Graceland. My reasons for choosing this track in particular are because of it's enduring beauty, simplicity, controversial nature and universal message. The fact that I saw Miriam Makeba in concert in Cork Opera House in 1985 as part of that city's Cork 800 celebrations adds a personal touch to it; albeit a tentative one, it's not as though I got to meet that great performer or that she is on the track I have chosen to review. Rather, it is because having watched her perform with her band in a setting that was so familiar to me and that she was so exotic opened my eyes to something far greater and wider than the little town in which I had grown up. When Paul Simon went to South Africa in the early 80s to begin recording with South African musicians there was a huge furore; apartheid was still in place, many black South Africans were languishing in prisons with no sign of release and the United Nations had put embargoes on trade, travel, sporting, cultural and artistic visits. How could such a high profile singer-songwriter do such a thing? What was he thinking? The answer, of course, is remarkably simple; he was reviving a flagging career in the most effective way known throughout popular music history controversy. There was no way that Graceland could be released quietly and the only question that remained was; would it intrinsically have any artistic value? The answer to that came pretty quickly upon the albums release, the public loved it. It was fresh, it was new-sounding and it brought to the world the beautiful music of a country whose music was for too long denied the world. In this writers opinion there are few places left whose music is not known to us, perhaps the folk music of China or some of the former communist states is all that remains to be discovered. But at that time, South Africa and its music was denied to the vast majority of those who were living in Western society.

1 Joe Strummer interviewed by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 1988, accessed online at http://articles.latimes.com/1988-01-31/entertainment/ca-39596_1_joe-strummer

Homeless is an a capella song, credited to Paul Simon and Joseph Shabalala (of Ladysmith Black Mambazo). The song was written collaboratively and Paul Simon explains the process in the liner notes in the following way and which I am giving in full here due to it explaining in detail not only the process but also the meaning behind the Zulu words:
Joseph Shabalala and 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 when I sent him a demo of HOMELESS with the melody and words. We are homeless, homeless/ moonlight sleeping on the midnight lake. In my note accompanying the cassette, I suggested that he make any changes in harmony or words that he wanted, and told him to feel free to continue the story in Zulu adding whatever melodic changes he felt appropriate. A month later, we met for the first time in London's Abbey Road studios. After hearing Joseph's additions to the song, we both felt we were on to something and decided to expand the piece .Thinking of a track from one of my favorite Ladysmith albums, I tried writing English lyrics that would slip into that pre-existing song. This is the "somebody say..." section, and we used it as a bridge from the end of the "homeless..." lyrics to the Zulu part that follows. At this point,we attached a typical Ladysmith ending, one that Joseph had used on many of his songs.A rough translation of these final words comes out as, "We would like to announce to the entire nation that we are the best at singing in this style "That concluded day one. On the second day,the group showed me an introduction they'd worked on late into the night. The melody came from a traditional Zulu wedding song, but the new lyrics now told of people living in caves on the side of a mountain, cold and hungry, their fists used as pillows. This new introduction fell into the body of the song and completed the collaboration.2

However, the meaning is subsumed into the actual musical quality of the singing. The blend of voices in this fantastic singing group (Ladysmith Black Mambazo) is a joy to behold throughout the extremely long introduction, while Simon seamlessly joins them later in the song. In this opening
2 Paul Simon's Graceland, South Africa, and the Mediation of Musical Meaning, Meintjes, Louise, Ethnomusicology, Vol. 34 No. 1, 1990 p. 40-41, accessed on jstor 19/12/11 at 12:44 http://www.jstor.org/stable/852356

section we hear various 'tribal' sounds punctuating and enhancing the beautiful harmonies being sung. These tribal expressions can easily bring to mind the Zulu call and response of Solomon Linda's original recording of Mbube,3 despite the latter's poor sound quality and harsher overall tone. The rhythmic yet gentle vocals draw in the listener and create a hypnotic quality that surpasses the language difficulties. When Paul Simon enters with Somebody say... the background vocals become even more punctuated, taking on a percussive quality which perseveres to the end of the song. Paul Simon has argued that the album isn't political, and we could believe him and take him at face value. However, songs such as Homeless even if not literally as politicized as songs such as Free Nelson Mandela by The Specials the use of the aforementioned Mbube style was a direct challenge to the apartheid supporting establishment of South Africa. Shoup explains the origins of the style thus:
Mbube developed from the acappella choral forms once used by men's military organizations, but transformed into religious music by missionaries in the late nineteenth century.4

It is in the subtlety of this use of an identifiably black, and as a consequence revolutionary, form that enabled Shabalala and Simon to make a political statement in South Africa while outwardly simply singing a song about the universal problem of homelessness. It is a testament to both writers that they should use such a form that for many outsiders was unknown and perhaps shows more accurately what Paul Simon's intentions were when he was considering collaborating with black singers from the townships of South Africa. A further example of a politically driven statement in the song is the use of the Zulu along with the English language. The song may be fully understood in South Africa, but in the Western world we understand only the English parts. Due to legislation passed in the 1950s ordering all people to speak Afrikaans, the language of the ruling minority

3 Mbube Roots (Zulu Choral Music), Zulu Villagers, Rounder Records, 1976. 4 Pop Music and Resistance in Apartheid South Africa, Shoup, J, Journal of Comparative Poetics Vol. 17

Literature and Anthropology in Africa, 1997, p 74, accessed on Jstor 02/01/12 at 14:13 http://www.jstor.org/stable/521608

white government, English has also been seen in South Africa as the language of resistance.5 The following extracts from the song show it's universality to both Western and South African, for homelessness has no borders or distinction of colour or creed: 'Homeless, homeless Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake.'6 and later: Strong wind destroy our home, Many dead, tonight it could be you7 It is a simple lyric displaying no outward sign of politics, but like many poets perhaps it is in what is not said that we can find the most meaning. The reference to a 'midnight lake' could mean the taking of black South Africans under the cover of darkness, the 'strong wind' could refer to government forces destroying homes and killing people randomly and indiscriminately because of their colour. It is entirely plausible that this reading would be correct but whether my reading is accurate or not, we may never know because Paul Simon has not, nor I suspect will ever explain his lyrics. No doubt Paul Simon's recording of the Graceland album was driven to revive his career, but it would appear that he was indeed making a political statement in how he set about achieving that goal. The subsequent sell-out worldwide tour on which it was mostly black South Africans enabled Simon to donate vast amounts of money to causes in South African townships. The album was an immediate success at the tills even while Paul Simon was trying to deflect the political ramifications, this is most likely due to the artistic qualities and universal messages that can be identified in it. Homeless, strangely doesn't deal with homelessness at all but the repetition of the haunting strains leaves no doubt for the listener as to its meaning. The fact that while many people around the world (and particularly in America) were going through a relatively easy time, the
5 Pop Music and Resistance in Apartheid South Africa, Shoup, J, Journal of Comparative Poetics Vol. 17

Literature and Anthropology in Africa, 1997, p 75, accessed on Jstor 02/01/12 at 14:13 http://www.jstor.org/stable/521608
6 Homeless, from Graceland by Paul Simon and Joseph Shabalala, Warner Bros, 1986. 7 Ibid

brutality of the apartheid regime in South Africa and the loss of family homes in the UK under the Thatcher regime brought a closeness and understanding that was borderless. The feelings expressed simply in the song were easily felt by all. Paul Simon himself doesn't purport that Graceland was anything but a musical endeavour, in fact he is at pains to point out that;
... I didn't say "I'd love to bridge cultures somewhere in the world, and mmm...where? Maybe South Africa." No, I just fell in love with the music and wanted to play... My view is instinctually cultural. Looking at things culturally, as I did with Graceland... there's a political implication but essentially I come at the world from a cultural sociological point of view, and they [his radical critics] want to define the world politically.8

The political ramifications aside, the cultural and human result of the project is certainly a success story. Homeless in particular on that album (Graceland) is a collaborative effort in both its inception and delivery, particularly as it comes from the ideas of both Shabalala and Simon. The album art is another interesting twist in the tale of the journey of Graceland. It shows an old world knight on a white horse. It is in bright and striking colours and seems to owe very little to the collaborative nature of the album itself. On further inspection one begins to realise that the colours are those that we would associate with the tribal costumes of Africa, oranges and yellows rather than the grey or black which would be worn by knights wearing armour. The knight is carrying a tribal spear in his right hand while in the left he has the traditional lance associated with medieval jousting. He is barefoot and that seems to give reference to ancient African tribes as opposed to the armour worn by European knights. The font used is simple and old-fashioned with merely the words 'Paul Simon' written above the album title. Perhaps on this one Simon couldn't resist the temptation to put himself above everyone else involved in the album. The album received a grammy in 19879 and in 1989 was number five in Rolling Stones' best album of the 1980s10 with Time Magazine putting it in the top 10011 albums of all time in 2006.
8 McNeil Lehrer Report, PBS 1987, taken from Paul Simon's Graceland, South Africa, and the Mediation of Musical Meaning, Meintjes, Louise, Ethnomusicology, Vol. 34 No. 1, 1990 p. 39, accessed on jstor 19/12/11 at 12:44 http://www.jstor.org/stable/852356 9 http://www.rockonthenet.com/archive/1987/grammys.htm 10 http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-best-albums-of-the-eighties-20110418/paul-simon-graceland19691231 11 http://entertainment.time.com/2006/11/02/the-all-time-100-albums/slide/graceland/#graceland

Perhaps the last word should go, not to the music critics or the public but to the man who collaborated with Paul Simon in Homeless, Joseph Shabalala when he told Rolling Stone magazine the following story of life in Johannesburg:
I remember there was a riot...people were fighting, the kids were fighting. But not Black Manbazo. The policeman ask us, 'Where do you come from?' I said, 'We come from singing.' They said, 'You are singing while the people are fighting?' I say, 'Yes. They are doing their job. I am doing my job.12

12 http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-best-albums-of-the-eighties-20110418/paul-simon-graceland19691231