Songs Sung in a Foreign Key Reveal Themselves Anew
Stephanie Berger for The New York Times
V
By JON PARELES
Published: April 11, 2008
In “You Can Call Me Al,” a hit from Paul Simon’s 1986 album, “Graceland,” a tourist finds himself in a foreign marketplace, hears unfamiliar sounds and cries “Hallelujah!” That must have been something like Mr. Simon’s reaction to the South African music that revitalized his songwriting in the mid-1980s — a revelation that exploded his perspective and transformed his musical vocabulary.
Skip to next paragraph
Related
Times Topics: Paul Simon
“Under African Skies,” the second part of Mr. Simon’s monthlong retrospective at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, revisits “Graceland” and the 1990 album “The Rhythm of the Saints,” on which Mr. Simon followed the African diaspora to Brazil. At the concert, other singers — Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Vusi Mahlasela from South Africa, Kaïssa from Cameroon, Luciana Souza from Brazil, David Byrne — took over many of the songs, fitting themselves into familiar arrangements.
Mr. Simon’s songs remain rich and startling. A few “Graceland” tunes overlaid his very Western lyrics onto existing South African tracks — a singer-songwriter’s remix. But both albums revolved around Mr. Simon’s own hybrids; the later one has vertiginous layers of rhythm and harmonies. Few bands but his own could handle the intricacy of songs like “Can’t Run But” or “She Moves On.” They need Vincent Nguini’s guitar, Bakithi Kumalo’s bass, Tony Cedras’s keyboards and Steve Gadd’s drums.
The lyrics dart from the personal reflections to visionary montages that touch on art, science and faith. From “Graceland” to “Spirit Voices,” two songs Mr. Simon chose to sing himself, the traveling narrators on the albums are seeking something to believe. Through the two albums, Mr. Simon also pondered the contrasts between his own mobility and privilege and the rooted and hardscrabble lives he saw. The concert did soft-pedal one song: “The Coast,” about a family of traveling musicians living “a lonely life/Sorrows everywhere you turn.” Kaïssa didn’t sing the hard-nosed lines that follow: “When you think about it/That’s worth some money/That’s worth something.”
In 1986 “The Boy in the Bubble” might have been inspired by cable-TV news; now it could be about YouTube and the Web’s “staccato signals of constant information.” The two albums — part of a period of ’80s world-pop discovery that also reshaped Mr. Byrne’s band, Talking Heads — presaged the file-shared, remixed pop of the Internet era.
The songs are not African or Brazilian songs, but very much American ones, as the guest singers demonstrated. Mr. Byrne was in his element with “You Can Call Me Al”; he gave it his old geeky yelp. And Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s deep vocal harmonies and high-stepping footwork were trusty as ever.
The other singers warmed the melodies and personalized what they could: Mr. Mahlasela with tone-shifting improvisations, Ms. Souza with supple scat-singing. Kaïssa and Ms. Souza sailed through the matrices of songs from “The Rhythm of the Saints.” Yet everyone except Mr. Simon himself had to strain to deliver the bobbing, weaving, naturalistic syncopation that he builds into his lyrics. Now and then a foreign accent obscured the words, turning the songs into exotic world music. Yet when that happened, the nonverbal groove said all that was needed.
“Under African Skies” continues through Sunday at the Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn; (718) 636-4100, bam.org; sold out.
