Paul Simon's Graceland - Under African Skies imagine...

This programme contains some strong language

-# Somebody say

-heh, heh, heh

-# Somebody sing

-hello, hello, hello

-# Somebody say

-heh, heh, heh

-# Somebody cry

-why, why, why?

# Kuluman

# Kulumani, kulumani sizwe. #

Over a quarter of a century ago,

Paul Simon travelled to Johannesburg in South Africa to record tracks

with a group of township musicians for the album that would become

perhaps his greatest achievement - Graceland.

It was a project that became marred in controversy. Nelson Mandela

was still in prison and apartheid was very much in force in South Africa.

An international boycott prevented artists performing in South Africa,

but Simon ignored it, determined to collaborate in person

with the black artists whose music he loved so intensely.

The turbulence around Graceland followed Simon and his collaborators

here to London's Albert Hall, where they performed

in front of sold-out audiences.

Ladies and gentlemen, Hugh Masekela.

Outside, however,

there were angry cries and crowds of anti-apartheid protesters.

For me, tonight's film tells a truly remarkable story

about the tension between creative freedom and political responsibility.

Paul Simon, the curious - some might say the arrogant artist -

just follows his ears to South Africa, falls in love

with the genius of the township musicians,

and with the music he encounters there.

# Kuluman, kulumani sizwe

# Singenze njani

# Baya jabula abasi thanda Yo ho. #

In tonight's Imagine,

the filmmaker Joe Berlinger follows Simon

as he travels back to South Africa for an emotional reunion

with the musicians who played with him on Graceland and who discuss,

with remarkable candour, the controversy that surrounded

the making of what is now regarded as one of the truly great albums.

VINYL CRACKLES

FAINT APPLAUSE GROWS

INTRO TO: "The Boy In The Bubble"

A remarkable album called Graceland, by singer Paul Simon,

-grew out of a trip that he made to South Africa.

-The Graceland album

started out a cross-cultural experiment. It has become

a worldwide hit. Five million copies have been sold so far.

I really wasn't thinking that Graceland was going to have

this kind of effect on people. I didn't think of it as anything other than a really interesting...

-Something you loved.

-Yes, right - it was a music... Exactly.

But you can't miss the political side, you know.

Paul Simon's Graceland is a big success,

but it's also controversial because Simon recorded the album in South Africa

and critics say he should have had nothing to do with a racist country.

The conscience of the world must be awakened to the horror

of apartheid in South Africa.

We are calling upon all international artists

to stay away from our country. What made you go there?

I was invited there.

I was invited by black musicians.

# I'm going to Graceland

# Graceland

# Memphis Tennessee

# I'm going to Graceland... #

When the artist gets into some sort of disagreement with politics,

why are the politicians designated to be the ones to tell us,

the artists, what to do, and we're supposed to follow, otherwise

-we're not good citizens...?

-I hear you, man. You're not allowed

to think, not allowed feel or have a political opinion.

It's nonsense, man.

# We will all be received in Graceland... #

I remember when Graceland first came out, there was some

controversy about it and so it was just one of those things, like...

Oh, well, controversy - I'm not going to buy THAT album.

But when I went to hear him perform

in a concert in Chicago, I was infected by the music.

# And she said losing love is like a window in your heart... #

Graceland was the Paul Simon record that rocked a little harder

than some of the ones just before that.

The ones just before had great songs, but this one

had a little bit more low-end going on.

# I'm going to Graceland

# Memphis, Tennessee I'm going to Graceland... #

Music is the most unifying thing I've ever seen.

-Cultures have been swapping information...

-It's only 12 notes, man. Until God gives us 13,

we all got the same materials to work with for 500 years. 12 notes.

This is what music is. It's the voice of God, you know?

-Don't you think?

-Yeah, I do.

-'Your number one news and talk station.

-All right, I mentioned

'Paul Simon - he's currently visiting South Africa, commemorating

'the 25th anniversary of the release of Graceland. He plans to reunite

'the South African musicians involved with the original project.'

The last time I was here was when we played...

It was a long time ago.

It was a long time ago.

I expect to see a lot of changes.

As any place would be, after a couple of decades.

Anyway, we'll see. We'll see what we get.

# This is the story of how we begin to remember

# This is the powerful pulsing of love in the vein. #

I'm trying to imagine it's the next few days and get my focus right.

Going back into a rehearsal kind of frame of mind...

..see where everybody's at, like...

Thinking about Ray...

Well, I haven't seen Ray now since 1991.

Oh, man - Ray!

Isaac I haven't seen...even longer.

-Isaac!

-Nice to see you!

Barney I haven't seen in a really long time.

Oh, my God! Barney's father!

# His path was marked

# By the stars in the southern hemisphere

# And he walked the length of his days

# Under African skies. #

'We had an intense period of time together and then we separated

'and went our separate ways, so we're always attached by Graceland.

'And now, with this reunion, we'll finally get the chance to talk about

'how we made the record and going on tour. That'll be interesting

'to me, cos it's the same event,'

but everybody's story is different.

SYNCOPATED BREATHS

APPLAUSE

Paul Simon is going to be giving - listen to this, this is exciting -

an exclusive and intimate performance this Thursday evening

in Johannesburg.

Paul would like to invite a few select listeners

to attend the event. That could be you.

I think all of us, we are like, "Oh, boy, this performance, man.

We have to get back into Graceland

and just do it one more time, 25 years later.

Here I was, living in South Africa and then

here comes a particular individual, called Paul Simon.

For me, music is the closest thing to religion.

And if it's utilised in the right way, it can inform

and bring people closer and they can find solutions to their problems.

And Graceland did that.

I've been doing music professionally since I'm 15 years old

and in many ways, Graceland was the most significant achievement of my career.

'I really think that the next generation still has a pretty deep

'connection to Graceland. For a lot of people my age,'

it was really evocative of being on like, road trips with their family

when they were five or six years old

and, for us, we have specific songs

where I think you can totally make the Graceland connection.

My perspective is that what Paul Simon was doing

had a beauty to it

and he had a great idea, a creative idea,

to mix his music and his rhythms and his ingenuity with some

that he had found in South Africa.

But at that moment in time...

..it was not...

..helpful.

There was this inconvenient thing called apartheid.

It got in the way.

Apartheid was a system made to divide the people of South Africa

on the basis of colour of skin.

The white South Africans

were dominating everything

under protection by law

and the whole apartheid system

intentionally, deliberately set out to prove

that black people were most inferior beings on Earth.

And people of South Africa did not take this lying down

and we fought.

We were fighting for our land, for our identity -

we had a job to do. And it was a serious job.

And we saw Paul Simon coming

as a threat and we saw it as an issue,

because it was not sanctioned

as we saw it, by the liberation movement

and the situation was not about Paul Simon, it was about

the liberation of the people of South Africa.

The criticism and the attacks on the album and on me

was very hurtful. And, er...

I don't really know what the internal debate was here.

I mean, I know what the result was.

But I don't know who said what and why.

From the South African side of things,

there's a lot that I don't know. A lot.

So, I was just thinking to myself, it's a bit surreal,

what's going on here, because the first time I saw you, it was on an album cover!

We didn't meet, but we had that sort of relationship

-over the cultural boycott...

-Right.

-And here you are, 25 years later.

I know you are a brilliant artist.

I've respected you all my life.

I know that you had no malintent in going and I do think

it's regrettable, that with the brilliance of what you did with these musicians,

there was this conflagration around it on a political level.

Well, this misunderstanding is really unfortunate

and it's been on my mind for all this time,

so I'll tell you my story,

then you tell me your story!

I was given a cassette... It was called Accordion Jive Hits,

by the Boyoyo Boys.

I used to play this tape all the time and...

after about three weeks of it, I said, you know,

this is my favourite music.

I'm not interested in listening to anything else.

I found out that it came from South Africa, so I asked my record label,

do we know anybody in South Africa?

They said yes, this producer, Hilton Rosenthal.

I had the call from Paul Simon and he said

that one of the cuts

on side two, I think, was called Gumboots...

And could I do some research?

I asked Paul at that time what he wanted to do with the song.

He said he had written some lyrics and he wasn't sure what

he was going to do, but that he just wanted to record the song.

Paul put the cassette in, played this thing and he sang and I said

to him, you know, you can just do that here in New York,

just get a couple of great players and, you know... You've got the

instrumentation, players can certainly do that. He looked at me,

like... "What?" He said, "No, no, no, no. I'm going down there."

I really wanted to do that music. But I was very aware of what was going on politically

in South Africa,

so I called up Harry Belafonte and, who I've known for many, many years.

When I spoke to Paul, I said...

I think it's great that you're going,

I think you should just let the ANC know, let Oliver Tambo

and the leadership know.

The ANC - the African National Congress -

was the voice of black South Africans. I can introduce you

to the powers that prevail, to let them know what you're doing

so you can have all the necessary... passes on it.

And I saw right then and there that Paul resisted the idea.

Paul, as I recall, declared that the power of art and the voice of

the artist was supreme and that to go to any one group or another

for whatever reason, to beg the right to passage was against his instinct.

It was an adventure that seemed irresistible to me.

And, of course, I was fascinated and intimidated by the fact that

I'm coming to South Africa.

Er...

And I didn't tell Harry, you know.

Which I probably shoulda done.

Except, it's like your dad, you know, when your dad says,

"don't take the car", but you really have a date that you really want

-to go on... You decide you're going to take the car anyway.

-Mm.

HUM OF PLANE ENGINE

So I came with my engineer and...

I was immediately struck by the extreme racial tension.

Coming from a country that WAS racially tense,

I was absolutely unprepared for... what it felt like in the air.

The law of the land was apartheid. Mandela was still in jail.

De Klerk was the president.

I was uncomfortable.

But, we got into the studio and began to record with this group

called Tau Ea Matsekha.

It was very exciting to see these South African groups come in.

I was already familiar with their records.

There was this accordion player named Forere and he didn't know

who I was, he didn't speak English, but our interaction

was really interesting, because you'd give him a signal

and say go and he'd just start to play.

Stand by, here we go.

And then everyone would fall in behind him.

He was playing a melody on the accordion that I wanted him to play

and we got a really great sound. It was kind of

all over the place and needed to be edited and changed around...

When we started jamming in the studio with Paul,

I didn't know him. I saw this guy with... With cowboy boots, you know?

And I was kind of asking myself, "what is this guy trying to do?"

because he's trying to, you know, fuse pop music, plus African music.

The first day, the feeling in the room was little strained.

That's what I sensed.

They're very shy. "Am I doing the right thing?"

And it was really something to see them change

during the course of the session.

All of a sudden, we're a bunch of musicians in this room, having fun.

Bakithi played the fretless bass and when he plays a groove,

the guy lights up. You know? He just lights up.

It's incredible. And his intonation and his articulation was phenomenal.

I was just working as a mechanic and then one day, I got this call

from the boss and he said, "Hey, Paul Simon is in town", you know?

"He's looking for some musicians" and I said Paul Simon?

Who is Paul Simon?

I mean, I had no idea and then the guy tried to explain

to me, singing all the songs, like the songs from Simon and Garfunkel

and I'm like... It doesn't ring a bell!

And then I take my bass and I go to the studio and so I meet Paul

and Roy Halee the engineer and they're like, hey, man - you know - let's play some grooves!

Every groove we play, Paul just love it and then he will stop

and change it, but we didn't know, I mean... Why? The groove is so good,

why is he changing? But he needed another part that we didn't know.

Then he'll break and give us different chords

and then we learn different things

and it was like going back to music school.

The initial recording sessions in Johannesburg

were planned pretty quietly.

I contacted the representatives of the groups that Paul

wanted to work with, including producer Koloi Lebona.

Hilton said could you organise the musicians

that would play on the session?

So I brought Bakithi Kumalo,

I brought Vusi Khumalo, the drummer,

and I brought Forere, who plays piano accordion.

What attracted me was the way Forere combines what his left hand

and his right hand is playing on the accordion

and I think that's exactly what drew Paul Simon

to be, like, entranced with this music.

HE SINGS

We are at the house of the piano accordion player, Forere Motloheloa.

We've come here to fetch him

for this Graceland reunion project.

This was the original melody that Paul Simon turned into

"Boy In The Bubble", yes?

And what he say is that he's paying tribute to a beautiful woman

that he has found and that he's happy with.

He says the solitude of the place combined with the landscape

gives him so much time to think of beautiful things

that he then translates into the music.

When Forere came to me, he was working in the mines.

The way he plays a piano accordion is the voicing -

how he's adapting it to suit the traditional Basotho melodies

and that's what led to the birth of Boy In The Bubble.

WOMAN ULLULATES

INTRO TO "Boy In The Bubble"

Do you think it'd be interesting to hear him sing HIS song?

-We'll see if we can combine the two songs.

-So he begins, it's a verse form.

I answer, verse form. He comes back, verse form.

-HE TRANSLATES

-After that,

we'll go to the chorus again - he sings again and I sing against him.

This is the way it happened for me. This is what happened in the studio.

Somebody would play and I'd say that's good, let's do that

then let's go here, then let's go there, then let's do this...

Oh, no - then Bakithi, you play here... Let's try it again and let's do it this way.

Trial and error. So we'll try it now, see how many errors we make(!)

# It was a slow day The sun was beating on the soldiers

# By the side of the road

# A bright light A shattering of shop windows

# The bomb in the baby carriage was wired to the radio... #

FORERE SINGS HIS OWN LYRICS

When Paul Simon was in South Africa

in 1985, it was at a moment

of high struggle.

The apartheid regime were at their most vicious.

GUNSHOTS

It was very scary.

I was just a kid growing up there,

but I had no idea why there was so much problem

and people are running, the cops, they come in the middle of the night, counting people.

There was a point some time where I couldn't eat for two days because there was no food.

My parents, they didn't know where they'd get the food

the next day, so you've just got to hang in there.

Because the apartheid regime were at their most vicious,

we had to ensure that by all means necessary, they are isolated.

The General Assembly of the United Nations

called for economic sanctions

oil embargo, sports boycott

and cultural boycott of South Africa.

Part of the cultural boycott was to call on all people

who are engaged in cultural activities

not to cooperate with South Africa.

What would the ANC hope that artists of other nations might do to help?

I think firstly, we'd like them to obey the cultural boycott

of South Africa to the letter.

We had been saying to artists all over the world,

at this point in the history of South Africa,

the expression of your support must be non-participatory.

You can't go there.

The way in which you interact with other peoples

is on a free basis, between free people.

I remember talking about the issue of Paul Simon, that I did not think

that it was correct for him to come.

# The way we look to a distant constellation

# That's dying in the corner of the sky... #

When I brought musicians to the Graceland session,

I was patently aware

at the time that there was a cultural boycott.

It was risky, but our music is always regarded as like Third World music

and I thought,

if our music gets a chance to be part of mainstream music,

surely that can't do any harm? So, when Paul Simon came,

I deliberately...withheld

some of the risks involved in doing this thing.

I thought, what the heck?

This is a chance in a million, we must do this.

HE SINGS

APPLAUSE

That's it.

# She looked me over I guess she thought I was all right

# All right in a sort of a limited way for an off night

# She said, "Don't I know you from the cinematographer's party?"

# I said who am I to blow against the wind?

# I know what I know I'll sing what I said

# We come and we go... #

This song was originally recorded with the General Shirinda

-and the Gaza Sisters. They're Shangaan.

-The Shangaan sound was electric guitar-based,

with a pop band around it and some very strange -

to Western ears, anyway -

strange sounds of the female vocalists

doing a wailing sound in the background.

# Ooooh! #

It's different, because it's like...

you're singing out of tune sometimes,

but that is how it should sound like, you understand?

When General Shirinda came into the studio, they came in with

the whole family - mothers and children...

It was like a party.

I was in South Africa for a very short time - like, maybe ten

or 12 days - recording frantically, and it was exhilarating.

It was really amazing.

The album that preceded Graceland, Hearts And Bones,

was a relative commercial failure and my reaction to that,

rather than thinking, "Oh, I'm dead,"

my reaction to that was, "Well, good -

"the next time I make a record,

"nobody will be looking over my shoulder,"

which is what they do, what they had been doing for years and years.

"What's the hit on this album? What's it going to be?"

Because I had an unbroken string of hits from Simon and Garfunkel

up until Hearts And Bones. So, that was in my mind when I went

to South Africa. Well, I can do whatever I want here

and I'm not going to get calls from the record company every week

saying "how's it going" or "can you send us something, we're dying to hear it?"

They just...you know, left me alone, and that was good.

With those groups that I knew, like General Shirinda and the Gaza Sisters,

I really had a clear idea of what I really liked

and what I wanted to record. Some of those songs, where...

there's co-writing,

that's because they were based on tracks that I had heard

and I could point to their record and say can you play this,

but change it a little bit here? And whatever writing was shared,

we would share the credit and share the royalties.

I thought about writing political songs about the situation,

but I'm not actually very good at it. Here's an interesting thing -

when I recorded with General Shirinda a song that became

I Know What I Know, I asked him, what that's about?

And he said, "You know, it's about...

"Remember the '60s when girls wore really short skirts?

"Wasn't that great?"

That's what it was about.

So...I said, you know... They aren't making up political music.

They're making up pop music.

These songs are pop music.

What of the other verse, about the chicken...?

Oh, the other one... It says...

HE SINGS

It means... Slaughter an owl...

..because there's no chicken

and you cut the head and throw it away.

The body will look like a chicken, so don't worry,

we will eat it in the train!

We'll eat it on the train. It'll look like a chicken.

Cut off the head of the owl,

it'll look like a chicken.

Then, you know... Nobody will know, we'll eat it on the train(!)

That's what it meant.

So I realised that instead of writing a song like Biko,

the Peter Gabriel song - which I love - in fact, I recorded it.

That is a great example of a political song.

My idea was... They play their best, I'm going to play my best.

I'm going to give them my best shot. I didn't come in here

promising to do anything other than to make a really great record.

They didn't say, "Come in here and tell our story".

They just said, "Yeah, you can come in and we'll play with you".

# I know what I know

# I'll sing what I sing

# We come and we go

# That's a thing that I keep in the back of my head

# Whoo whoo whoo whoo

# Whoo whoo whoo! #

LAUGHTER

The sessions were great. But the racial tension in South Africa

was at such a level that it was palpable, even in the studio.

Here's a kind of an example of what it was like. The Boyoyo Boys

came into the studio and I said you know, play this and they couldn't

play it and when they came back the next day, they still couldn't play.

And I'm really frustrated - this is terrible, you know?

And...one of the white engineers, or assistant engineers said,

"Well, now you see what we're talking about here? This is what with talking about."

You know? I mean... "They can't do it.

"They tell you they can, but they can't do it."

It WAS a racist comment.

Did it bother me? It stunned me.

You know? Er...

I didn't know.

The epiphany comes from the next day, when Ray Phiri comes in.

Ray comes in with his band, which was probably the top band

in South Africa - it was called Stimela

and the drummer was Isaac Mtshali.

So they came in and I was playing with them and said,

"well, that's good. Why don't we do that?"

He said, "I can do that and then...

"Then I'll overdub another part on top of it".

And I'm still thinking about the Boyoyo boys, so I say, "Yeah, yeah,

"just get THAT and I'll be happy", you know?

So... He does, he gets it, and I think, "Well, that's pretty good."

He says, "Let me do the overdub now."

So I say, "Yeah, OK, go ahead, try it."

And it's...great.

And suddenly I realise, you know, the guy's brilliant.

I was ready to buy into the... into the racist thing.

You know, they fed it to me. They give it to you, you know?

So...you get a big South African...

lesson.

'We were all just meeting for the first time.

'They didn't know my political beliefs and I didn't know theirs.

'I knew that Stimela was a number-one group,

'but I didn't know that they were known as a group

'that was provocative to the police.'

Sometimes, at the gig, the police are waiting for us.

They say, "Where are those Stimelas?

"We want those Stimelas. Where are they?"

They come with this teargas and they put teargas all over the place,

people went like this.

I'm not afraid. If I have to die, and I die onstage,

I'll be the happiest.

But if I have to die on the street when somebody does that,

that would be cowardly.

As a musician, I could see that things are bad,

but we keep on... singing the song, man.

You know?

MUSIC: Intro to "You Can Call Me Al"

One day Ray started playing the riff...

Bwee-dap-bap-bap, bwee-dap-bap-bap.

After we recorded the backing track,

next morning I picked Paul up on the way to the studio

and I said to him, "I have a feeling that yesterday

"at least one of the hits from this album was recorded."

# If you be my bodyguard, I could be your long-lost pal

# I can call you Betty

# Betty, when you call me you can...

-AUDIENCE:

-# Call me Al

# Call me Al... #

-Let me tell you my story.

-Good.

Um... I had been in exile for a while,

and, um, I went to live in England.

These people were hunting my father, Oliver Tambo, as a terrorist.

As the president of the ANC, he was an icon of human rights

and I grew up surrounded by revolutionaries.

Our home was a hub for all exiles, so I met a lot of people in that time

who showed me that this was actually a united struggle.

And we formed Artists Against Apartheid to enforce

-this cultural boycott.

-Mm-hm.

Because we genuinely felt that if you go there

you become part of apartheid's attempt to gain international legitimacy

and pull itself out of the sanctions that was gripping the country.

And so, when you came to South Africa,

it wasn't the ideal form of cultural exchange.

-They weren't free people, Paul, and...

-Then why did they say, "Come"?

-Well...

-Do you think they were all selfish that they did it?

-For three times union scale?

-Yeah, I think if you went anywhere in the world

and you said, "Paul Simon wants to perform with you,"

people would pretty much say, "Yes, I'll do that."

Yes, but I treated them as equals, they treated me as equals.

We treated each other as musicians.

We didn't have anything to do with colour, race.

It was purely music, and it wasn't lost on any of them

-because here I come back 25 years later and those people are my dear friends.

-Mm.

-Joseph!

-Hey!

-Ah, my brother!

-Where is my hug?

You come back with it. Ahhh!

'It was very special to work with Paul Simon,'

because, many, many years,

it was very, very difficult to work together with a white person.

But when we started to work with Paul Simon we didn't see a difference.

We didn't see that he's white or I'm black, I just see him as my brother.

-You good?

-Do it again.

-Do it again? I would do it for ever.

-Yeah!

-I'm so glad to see you, my friend.

-Oh, thank you so much.

'Joseph Shabalala from Ladysmith Black Mambazo came into the studio,'

and that's the group that I knew from a British documentary called The Rhythm Of Resistance.

-PRESENTER:

-In townships outside the white cities,

music happens everywhere.

The Ladysmith Black Mambazo are a group who've found

exceptional commercial success.

They draw on the Zulu tradition of the male vocal group

to create a unique blend of African and Western harmonies.

THEY SING IN ZULU LANGUAGE

The sound of Ladysmith Black Mambazo,

it's a sound of everything that surrounds us.

Because we grew up in the farm.

Birds singing, wind blowing,

frogs singing and...

-some small insect...

-HE LAUGHS

So the music is... It's there all the time.

HE SINGS IN ZULU LANGUAGE

'When I got a call, I just ran to my cousin.'

"Hey, I talked to somebody! His name is Paul Simon.

"He want to see me." I was proud of that. "He want to see me.

"He want to talk to me!"

And the guy said, "Go there! Go there! Don't make a mistake.

"Please go there! And come back and tell us."

'Joseph Shabalala was very quiet in the studio.'

He was just kind of mysterious and quiet.

'So I wasn't sure whether he liked what I was doing

'or whether he liked me.'

And he gave me, like, ten or 12 albums,

which I used to listen to every night.

I used to, you know, listen to 'em on my...

I would fall asleep listening to them.

And I just totally became just...

..um...

You know, er...bewitched by Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

Because they were so beautiful.

I thought it was so beautiful that I was totally intimidated.

They were so good at what they did and it was so contained

that I didn't really know at the time

how I could possibly fit into their world

and didn't know whether they wanted me to fit into their world.

Paul was so polite. Paul has a special magic. Nobody has that magic.

He just come to me like a baby.

Like, "Father... can you teach me something?"

THEY SING IN ZULU LANGUAGE

And we hugged. That was my first time to hug.

Especially a white man.

When I finished that, I said, "Ooh, I'm in jail now."

And Paul Simon was talking and I forgot about that.

"Oh, yes, and, Joseph... Paul Simon from New York City.

"I just listen to your record

"and I think you can do something together."

I'm a person who is just like... When you talk about music to me,

let's do it now. And I said, "Yes, Paul, let's do it!" and he said,

"Right, Joseph. I'll let you know where, when."

So we decided that I would write a song

and we would record outside of South Africa.

I didn't want to go back to South Africa.

I wasn't comfortable. I wanted to get out of there.

We took it back to New York,

and that's where the work really started. Putting it all together,

it was a heck of an undertaking.

The challenge on this album was there were no songs,

no arrangement. So the challenge was editing, editing, editing,

and lots of editing. You know, taking things from here and putting

them there, take that out, put it over here, and re-copying things.

If you heard what the tracks were originally, without his magic

and his echo and his devices that he used,

it wouldn't sound so huge and so mysterious.

So we finished all our editing, we made tracks that had some

semblance of a song there, and he went out and tried desperately

to put words to each one. And he did. And he slaved at it,

it was awfully hard,

because there's so much going on in those tracks.

You know, they are very busy tracks.

Paul came back from Africa and we met on holiday that year,

we were at the same place in the summer on Long Island.

I'd known him for a little while as a friend,

and he talked about this music, and I said, have you got it?

Let's hear it. So we went out in the car

and he played it on the car stereo.

'When I was writing back at home, I would write a verse,'

it would be fine, then I would write another verse

and it wouldn't be fine, I would write another verse and it would be fine.

It's all good, except that verse -

I don't know why that verse isn't good.

It should be, it seems like it's exactly the same as the others.

And I'm doing the lyrics in the same rhythm, I really don't get it.

I was really frustrated by not being able to get the lyrics to fit.

And then I'd say, let me really listen to what is going on.

And when I started to really listen, then I realised that the guitar part

was playing a different symmetry than I had assumed it was playing.

And the bass was doing something that was much more important

and that you really might be better off following what the bass was doing.

INAUDIBLE

'So I began to think about that, the rhythm, what that meant,

'and what effect that would have on the lyrics,'

and what effect that would have on storytelling. And I began to raise the bar for my own writing.

# Fat Charlie the archangel swooped into the room

# He said, "I have no opinion about this"

# And I have no opinion about that... #

'So I ended up writing abstract or ironic or...

'But in either case, sort of sophisticated lyrics'

to what were sophisticated rhythms.

Two, one, two, three...

'So you get a song like Graceland, where, you know,'

in the middle of the song there is a girl in New York City

who calls herself the human trampoline.

# There is a girl in New York City

# She calls herself a human trampoline... #

A lyric that would never appear in a South African song. I mean,

it's a very New York lyric. I wrote it while I was walking past

the Museum of Natural History, actually.

# And I'm going to Graceland, to Graceland... #

And I kept singing this chorus,

"I'm going to Graceland, I'm going to Graceland."

And I was thinking, of course, that will go away

because the song is not about Elvis Presley or Graceland, I mean,

it's a South African record. But it wouldn't go away. Finally,

I said, it's not going away, I'd better go to Graceland. I've never

been. I'd better make that trip and see... Maybe there's something

about this that I'm supposed to find out. And had I not made that trip,

I wouldn't have been able to write the landscape that is

the first verse about the Mississippi Delta

shining like a national guitar.

# Shining like a national guitar...

# I'm following the river down the highway

# Through the cradle of civil war... #

And so the song took on a bigger meaning.

# I'm going to Graceland, Graceland, in Memphis... #

It was a metaphor for a state of grace. I was taking absurdist lyrics

which I thought had no place with this rhythm track,

and finally saying, well, maybe it does have a place.

Sometimes when I'm falling, flying, tumbling in turmoil -

this was something else that I was doing, was a lot of syllables.

# This is what she means

# She means we're bouncing into Graceland... #

"This is what she means, she means we're bouncing into Graceland" -

which was also something that I hadn't done,

which was taking the chorus word and putting it into the verse.

Usually, the chorus has its own repetitive phrase or word,

and you don't hear that word in the verse. But now I was saying, well,

there's no reason to separate. They can bleed back and forth.

That's the beginning of saying, actually, these patterns that felt restrictive are not...

They needn't be there.

# I may be obliged to defend every love every ending... #

I remember he would invite me over to hear what he was doing.

We did that a lot in those days. We still do.

He would have the backing tracks

and he would play those to me and sing the words. Really...

At some point, I said, "Paul, this is going to be a really, really good record."

That's very good, guys.

'That was a great gift that I received'

from making the trip to South Africa, and, you know,

and collaborating with African musicians.

# Somebody cry, why, why, why? #

'It wasn't until I got home that I started to think,

'I could write a song for Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

'So I wrote Homeless, imitating them,'

and sent the demo to them and said, "You can use this

"or you can change it, add to it if you want,

"or change it completely if you want. Do anything you want to it."

# Homeless, homeless

# Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake... #

After two weeks, we saw the cassette came in the post office from Paul.

And then we put the cassette to play, so he was playing a piano

and singing only two lines -

"homeless, homeless, moonlight sleeping on the midnight lake".

# Homeless, homeless

# The moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake... #

And then he was doing some other noise like...

And then when we thought, we said,

"Oh, maybe he was trying to say, "Gr-rr" and do all those things.

They wrote back and said, yeah, they liked it and they had some ideas.

And we decided to go to Abbey Road Studios in London.

-London!

-First-class.

-London!

THEY SING IN ZULU LANGUAGE

In London, we were taken to the studio,

and that was the first time for us as a group to meet Paul Simon.

Wow! It was wonderful.

It felt so good and so exciting. So the microphones

were set there and then we got there. We started to sing the song.

But the song didn't want to work the first day.

Our producer, here at home in the western coast was trying to help.

"No, guys, just sing it like this. Maybe Paul wants this."

And there was so many people trying to help. We tried the song

from two o'clock until six in the evening.

'And then the song didn't want to work at all. Paul Simon said, "OK,

'"let's call it a day and we will see tomorrow."'

We went back to our hotel very disappointed,

because usually Ladysmith Black Mambazo will record 12 songs a day.

But this time, only one song, we couldn't make it.

We were so disappointed. And then we got to the hotel,

we had dinner and then we got together, we prayed.

Our prayer was very, you know, deep that day.

I remember that I was so concerned. No, I've never failed in anything,

so this is no time to fail now.

And then so we practised the song until 12 midnight,

and then the song was together.

-I should come over here.

-'The next day when we went to the studio

'and Joseph Jacks walked up to Paul Simon and said,'

"We have been practising.

"So we want you to listen to what we have been practised."

THEY SING

We just looked at one another - OK, guys.

HE SINGS

Just like I'm angry.

HE SINGS IN ZULU LANGUAGE

And then Paul...

# Homeless... #

I nearly faint. I thought he was going to wait until we finished,

and he gets it in the right position.

# Homeless

# Homeless

# Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake

# Homeless, homeless

# Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake

# Homeless, homeless

# The moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake

# Homeless, homeless... #

'I think it took two takes. They had it so perfectly.

'The beginning of the song is a folk song, a traditional song.

'I said, "Well, what does it mean?"

'They said, "Oh, we are far away from home and we are sleeping'

"and our fists are our pillows." I said, "Oh, that's beautiful."

In two hours, the song was finished.

We were so excited and so satisfied and then we said,

"Ooof! This is it. Wonderful."

# Somebody sing... #

I enjoyed to work with Paul Simon, it was just like,

it's my younger brother or elder brother. Who is this guy?

He was hiding himself in America - this is my brother.

I called him brother every day.

Brother. Because of the music. Music is something like prayer.

# Homeless, homeless

# Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake. #

Then we decided that we would get Ray and Bakiti,

and Isaac and form a kind of studio band.

And I invited them and Ladysmith to come to New York

to finish the album. And everybody was getting really excited.

First they got off the plane and were met by a limo, you know,

and a white driver, and they drove into Manhattan.

I used to see a limo in the movies,

and in South Africa, I don't remember seeing any limo anywhere,

you understand what I'm saying?

And it was a cool thing to be in the limo

and you are served whisky and that kind of thing.

You know, you are being treated like a musician.

I remember - was it Bakiti or Isaac?

He said, "We want to go to Central Park, where do we go to get a permit?"

I said, "You don't need a permit, you just go.

"You can go anywhere you want."

Those guys were coming from an imprisoned society

into freedom for the first time. It was very touching.

They were free. Free.

'The record was supposed to come out in the spring of '86,

'and we were booked to do Saturday Night Live,'

and Warner Brothers decided to postpone the record until the fall,

but we were booked for Saturday Night Live.

So I said, "We're all here, we might as well try to do another track."

So we did what became Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes.

They were doing the song, then they stopped, and Paul Simon said,

"Can you play this song? I'm just doing this song,

Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes.

And then Joseph just took a piece of paper

and then the pen and then he wrote it down. Only a few words.

What were the words?

HE SPEAKS ZULU

# She's rich girl She don't try to hide it

# Got diamonds on the soles of her shoes

# He's a poor boy

# Empty as a pocket, he's empty as a pocket with nothing to lose... #

The lyrics means...

HE SPEAKS ZULU

It's not usual...

HE SPEAKS ZULU

But in our days...

HE SPEAKS ZULU

We see those things happen.

HE SPEAKS ZULU

The women, they can take care of themselves.

# I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes... #

We decided to put Ladysmith at the end of the track, and they

had never sung with musicians before, they always sang a cappella.

We were there, maybe, not even two hours time. And then

Paul Simon said, at the end, let's do this.

# Da-na-na-na, da-na-na-na-na. #

Everybody was having a good time.

After that, we went to do Saturday Night Live. And everybody was

very nervous about that. That audience, they are very mean.

We didn't care because we knew we believed what we had was a gift.

We sing for you - if you like it, you like it, if you don't, you don't.

And we went on the show, and we sang the songs that weren't out

-on the record yet.

-Do you think people are going to like this,

-what you're doing?

-I'm not sure.

That's why I have this expression on.

Ladies and gentlemen, Paul Simon with Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

APPLAUSE

THEY SING IN ZULU LANGUAGE

# She's a rich girl She don't try to hide it

# Diamonds on the soles of her shoes

# He's a poor boy Empty as a pocket

# Empty as a pocket with nothing to lose

-# Sing ta-na-na

-Ta-na-na

# Ta-na-na-na

# She got diamonds on the soles of her shoes

-# Ta-na-na

-Ta-na-na... #

And then we sang the song. We performed it with confidence.

# People say she's crazy, she's got diamonds on the soles of her shoes

# Well, that's way to lose these walking boots

# Diamonds on the soles of her shoes. #

Everyone was kind of in awe.

It was unlike anything that had been on the show before.

And you felt it in the studio,

you knew it was happening in the country.

It was just, "boom".

'The cheering and the sound in the studio from the audience,'

it was so loud that I kind of lost my place in one of the things.

It was really surprising. Nobody had ever heard it before.

Them being on the show was a revolution in taste.

It was the synthesis of two cultures and the obvious affection that

they had for Paul and Paul had for them was the perfect moment.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo became the hippest act on the planet.

Everybody wanted Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

They became international stars and remain so.

So, almost two years after I first went to South Africa,

the record finally came out.

There's so much despair coming out of South Africa,

so many haunting issues of debt and oppression. It's sometimes hard

to remember that life there does go on in all of its forms.

And a celebration of the black life of South Africa can be heard

in this country in a remarkable album called Graceland.

All artists who have long careers periodically hit dead ends.

And if you're going to keep a career going, you have to keep being

a kid again. And that is in a way what he did with Graceland,

to be a kid again, to go back to three chords,

to be bouncing around,

to be making joyous, danceable music.

It's my favourite album of all time.

It just sort of opened up a space inside of you.

For myself, my deep and now abiding interest in South Africa

was stirred by first listening to Graceland.

Simon's work Graceland recently won a Grammy for album of the year.

But somewhere around three weeks after it came out,

the first criticism came. Which I was completely unprepared for.

And the criticism was...

"You broke the UN cultural boycott."

-NEWSREADER:

-Paul Simon has run into political problems in South Africa.

The African National Congress

protested his recording in South Africa - a violation, they said,

of the UN cultural boycott.

The album had the controversy around it. It was very vexed,

going to South Africa at that time.

And you got the feeling Paul Simon had gone into it

on a stealth mission and collaborated with the South Africans.

He was collaborating, it turned out, with the right South Africans,

but the whole project seemed a little odd.

A lot of the press picked it up in the United States -

Rolling Stone amongst them - and kind of saw an opportunity to

beat up on a famous guy who may be made a mistake. So they were all

"Paul Simon didn't ask permission from the UN

"and is on the blacklist from the UN."

The intensity of the criticism really did surprise me.

And part of the criticism was, "Here is this white guy from

"New York. And he came in and ripped off these poor, innocent guys."

There is an aspect of this album that bothered me initially.

You have this rich white guy singing on top of these

South African singers.

To demonstrate how his work melded with that of the South Africans,

he first played a track of a popular local band.

MUSIC PLAYS

And then the same tune after it had been Simonised...

To me at the time it seemed like the tourist picture.

"Here is me in front of the Taj Mahal in my T-shirt waving."

And that bothered me at the time. At this point, it doesn't.

I think he was right, and he was ahead of me.

You know, he was saying, we can make this amalgam work,

this combination work. And I think a lot of people at the time

had this knee-jerk reaction of, you know, "rich, privileged white guy,

"poor country, must be bad."

How can you justify going there, taking all of this music from this

country? It's nothing but stealing. It ain't nothing but stealing.

ISOLATED APPLAUSE

How can you just go and tell me, "Oh, I went there..."

Graceland is a collaboration.

You don't believe that it's possible to have a collaboration?

It's always an interesting debate. It's happened all the way

through history, particularly through black history.

Do you believe that a collaboration is possible

-between musicians?

-Between you and them? No.

-Why?

-You don't understand.

-Why, because I'm white and they're South African?

-You don't understand.

With the Beatles, we actually recycled American black music

to Americans. We came over and we were really doing a lot of Motown.

But a lot of white kids hadn't heard Motown.

You don't understand the music.

Well, you are saying something that they, these musicians,

in fact, disagree with.

I accepted Paul's music and what he'd done the minute it came out -

I had no resistance to that. I am a fan of his,

and I like very much, so much, what he's done. And to have

that album, in particular, which was filled with moments of great genius,

and delight, a lot of that welcoming however was under the understanding,

or at least the belief, that he would square what he was doing

with the powers who led the resistance to apartheid.

Which was the ANC. It never dawned on me that that was not the case,

and I didn't know that that was not the case until Paul

called and we met in my home. And he explained to me that he had

this crisis, or this obstacle before him.

Harry said, "You should talk to the ANC."

So when I met with the ANC, I said, "Hey, I have no fight with the ANC,

"we have no fight with the ANC. We support the ANC,

"we'd be willing to do concerts for you." And they said,

"Look, here is the problem.

"You went to South Africa, but you didn't ask us.

"And the way, the way we are structured is if you...

"You have to ask ANC if you're going to do anything."

So I said, "Oh, really? Is that the kind of government you are going to be?"

You know, does that mean I have to, you know, we have to show you

what kind of lyrics we're going to write, or if

the musicians' union decides to vote this way and you don't like

the way to vote, then you will change it around?

I mean, so, I mean, that's just a government that just...

You're going to fuck the artists like all kinds of governments.

What are we talking about here?

-What was their response?

-The guy's response was, "Hey,

"personally, I agree with you. But that's what the policy is."

When you have a boycott, it's not flexible. For many people,

that was the issue. Is Paul Simon busting the gates of the cultural

boycott open? We were part of this international sanctions campaign,

which was cultural and sports and business and military.

And in all of those areas, it wasn't about,

"Well, we have a military embargo, but this American tank,

"that one can go through." You know, it was complete.

And it was complete for a reason.

Because you can't ask of everyone what you don't ask of one.

Hugh is here, here comes Hugh now. Hi, Hugh. How you doing?

'Hugh is one of the great South African musicians.

'He is an international star, and he was a political exile.

'Hugh connected up with me in London and we began to talk about touring.'

And I don't think that I could have done it without him.

B-flat, size 1.

Paul had just come from South Africa and he said,

"Listen, I just did this thing

"and I would really like to take it all over the world. You interested?"

I said, of course.

And I said to Paul, it would be good to pull in, like, Miriam Makeba,

because I was anticipating the troubles also.

Here now is Miriam Makeba.

APPLAUSE

Miriam Makeba became the most visible African artist in the 1960s

when nobody had heard of artists from South Africa.

She was the first artist to really break that.

And she was the first person

to conscientise not only the world but America, especially, about

-what was happening in South Africa.

-Would you not resist if you

were allowed no rights in your own country?

We had been away from home

by that time, me and Miriam, over 25 years. In exile.

I spoke to Miriam, she was interested, and I knew it was

going to be great. We were going to be like pigs in mud

with all that was going to happen.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

# The sun was beating on the soldier by the side of the road

# There was a bright light A shattering of shop windows

# As the bomb in the baby carriage was wired to the radio

# These other days of miracle and wonder

# This is the long distance call... #

By the time we did the Graceland tour, and you saw the physical

presence of Africans and whites and the melange,

the mixture of races and cultures, that was a supreme moment.

He wanted to demonstrate that he wasn't all the things

that were inferred by the fact that he had broken the boycott.

So by putting Miriam Makeba and Ladysmith Black Mambazo

and the whole...as you say,

back there, he did a lot to balance social conflict,

or social contradiction. And in that context, I think,

he declared to the audiences that he faced where his deeper self resided.

I remember when we were on tour,

especially in Europe during the winter times,

every time Black Mambazo went on the stage and started singing...

HE SINGS IN ZULU LANGUAGE

..I would feel tears coming. Here I am, I am an African boy,

I'm in the middle of the snow.

And people have come to this show, they have 50,000 people

filled up in the stadium. And I would be crying, like,

"Damn. We are really seeing the world."

Now, at the time, the boycott stated that

South African musicians could not play

anywhere in the world. Paul decided

that it was a risk he was prepared to take.

Touring with Graceland was actually quite tense at times,

particularly in Europe.

Before every concert, the police would come with bomb-sniffing dogs

and go through the whole theatre.

We had a couple of theatres evacuated, and shows

postponed because of bomb threats.

NEWSREEL: 'The day he arrived, a hand grenade was thrown at a building

'housing sound equipment to be used during the concerts.

'A group calling itself the Azanian National Liberation Army

'claimed responsibility. More violence was threatened

'unless Simon called off the tour.'

I remember when we were in London, especially, we performed

at the Royal Albert Hall - I think we were there for 10 days or so -

and of course we had the anti-apartheid movement

protesting.

'Outside the Albert Hall, leaflets critical of the activities

'of the star are presented to his bemused fans.'

At one point, somebody

called the hotel in London

and ordered the South Africans to go back home.

I was in a room with Ray Phiri,

and Ray says, "Asante, do you believe this?

"We face apartheid every day,

"and you're ordering us to go home - are you crazy?!"

I've never seen Ray so angry!

I remember, I got a call at the hotel in London -

I've got to go and see the ANC.

I went to a pub, when I met some of the...

senior members of the movement,

who wanted to know what I was doing.

And I told them that no, we had to perform.

Perform with whom? With Paul Simon.

They told me, "Don't you know that there's a cultural boycott?"

I said, "OK, tell me, like I'm a seven-year-old, teach me

"what did I do wrong. I don't understand it, I'm the victim here.

"I live in South Africa.

"How can you victimise the victim twice?"

Ladies and gentlemen, Hugh Masekela.

That militant approach was at the core of the criticism

that was levelled against me,

and had it not been for Hugh Masekela and for Miriam Makeba

and Ray Phiri, and all the South Africans who were on the tour,

who said, "Stop, what are you doing?"

You know? "We WANT to be out here, we WANT to show our music"...

There's a train that comes from Namibia

and Malawi...

From Lesotho, from Botswana, from Swaziland,

from all the hinterlands of southern and central Africa,

this train carries young and old African men who are conscripted

to come and work on contract

in the golden mineral mines of Johannesburg.

There would be press conferences all the time.

And the press conferences were, like, just people who were

just hoping that I had made some kind of ridiculous mistake.

But when it hit the fan,

Hugh and Miriam, I mean, they could barely be contained.

Hugh would say,

"What did you ever do for South Africa?"

I mean, there were times when we really had to, like,

hold him back! He wanted to...

Hugh wanted to be in a fight. So mostly,

we were trying to explain that we were

as anti-apartheid as could be, that Hugh

was an exile, that Miriam was not allowed to come back

for the burial of her daughter,

that we were very much against the regime.

..and think about the loved ones that they left behind

and may never see again, because...

'We used to have furious arguments'

about the boycott, you know?

Because I said, I just said,

"It's great, and it's helping South Africa."

But when you start to like also ban South African musicians,

who can't make contact with the outside world - outstanding artists -

they can't be hard on people who are already suffering in South Africa.

You can't witch-hunt your people - this show is going to be a smash,

and it's going to play to many people who have never heard of South Africa.

When I was in exile in Botswana,

I had thought...

of, er, joining the ANC.

But over the years I've learned that

if an artist, or anybody, has really something to say

about their concerns for the wellbeing of people,

then they're in the wrong place if they join a political party,

because they have to then follow the strict rules of the party.

And I've never been able to, like, live under rules.

We went to Zimbabwe. Paul wanted to give

South Africans a chance to witness

what we have been giving the people in Europe,

in America, all over the world, so he chose

to do it in Zimbabwe. A lot of South Africans came over

to witness this, and it was beautiful.

Ladies and gentlemen, comrades and friends,

this is Graceland in concert 1987.

CROWD CHEERS AND APPLAUDS

She's been in political exile now for 27 years.

They call her Mama Africa, the queen of South African music,

Miriam Makeba.

CROWD CHEERS AND SCREAMS, MUSIC STARTS

# Joseph's face was black as night

# The pale yellow moon

# Shone in his eyes

# This is the story of how we begin to remember

SHE REPLIES IN SWAHILI

# This is the powerful pulsing of love in the vein

# After the dream of falling and calling your name out

# These are the roots of rhythm

# And the roots of rhythm remain... #

The Zimbabwe concert meant a lot to me,

and to a lot of us, because

it was great for South Africans to get together,

not just black South Africans,

but black and white South Africans,

which is something that was never done.

# In early memory

# Sounds of music were ringing round

# Were ringing round my grandmother's door... #

Everybody knew how important this moment is. It was amazing,

because Masekela them and Miriam them

embraced the whole project, and really,

made sure we're doing it right.

It's very important to be unified.

They really prepped us really nice, and set an example for us.

HE PLAYS INTRO TO NKOSI SIKELEL' IAFRIKA

# Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika... #

I think the idea of us singing the South African anthem,

it came from Paul.

It was the forbidden one at that time.

As soon as we start the song,

Paul would step back,

because he didn't understand the lyrics, you know.

But I think after... two or three days,

we said, "No. Paul, you have to learn the lyrics,

"because we are all one here,

"and this is about you and all of us,

"so you need to learn the lyrics." So we taught him!

# Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika... #

'To be standing on the stage'

with people whose lives were scarred by apartheid

was very, very powerful.

I really felt privileged

and honoured to be asked to be a part of it.

# Thina lusapho lwayo. #

CROWD SCREAMS AND CHEERS

As Graceland became a phenomenon, people began

to put a very clear human face

on the victims of apartheid.

Suddenly, here's Joseph Shabalala, here's Miriam Makeba,

here's suddenly these charismatic, gifted people,

and they are...revealing

a...a magical world.

THEY PLAY AND SING

And people said, "Oh, my God, what do you mean

"that that's going on there? This is really a crime."

Not that they didn't think it before,

but suddenly, it became a very powerful, emotional,

realisation - and that is what was going on with Graceland.

But you can't forget that all of them

who had performed with you out there returned to a country in which

they had no citizenship and no rights.

So, as people themselves,

it may have been good for them in terms of their careers,

it may have been a wonderful thing

in terms of spreading knowledge of our music,

but, you know, they are... they are individuals,

and we were a nation under apartheid.

And so whatever was good for the nation

came first, not what is good for a few individuals.

But what did the artists have to say about that?

Because my experience, from my own country,

and in general, is that there's a certain hierarchy.

At the top are the politicians -

and behind the politicians are the mysterious people

who have money and power.

After that comes the warriors.

Then comes the economists, who say, "This is how a structure must be."

And somewhere down the list comes the artist.

-Mmm.

-And when the artist comes in,

the politician says, "We really need you to come and play

"for this fundraiser." "Oh, we have a very important dinner, we'd

"like you to come and sing a few songs acoustically after dinner."

The artists are always treated

as if we worked for... the politicians.

AUDIENCE APPLAUDS AND CHEERS

Thank you.

Thank you and welcome...

to this, er, reunion of

the 25th anniversary of the release of Graceland.

These are the musicians who played on the record

and toured with us,

and it's been a great joy for me

reunite with them after so many years.

That was the flaw in the cultural boycott -

saying, "We won't let you come over here

"and record, and bring what you know

"to intermingle with what we know, so that WE can grow,

"so that we ALL can grow, and so that we all can grow

"the deep truth that artists speak."

# The Mississippi Delta

# Was shining like a national guitar

# I am following the river down the highway

# Through the cradle of the civil war

# I'm going to Graceland, Graceland

# Memphis, Tennessee I'm going to Graceland... #

If there's anything that can conquer the world,

music, a song - you don't have to understand the language,

you just have to understand the feel. I mean, it's 13 notes,

and all - every musician plays...we're all playing

around 13 notes.

# It's a turn-around jump shot It's everybody jump start

# It's every generation throws a hero up the pop charts

# Medicine is magical, and magical is art

# The boy in the bubble The baby with the baboon heart... #

Music evolved the way the album predicted.

A lot of people make music this way now. It's early sampling.

The album uses something from elsewhere and puts you on top of it,

and is a layered assemblage

and places and ideas, and... welcome to hip-hop.

INTRO TO "Bodyguard"

# A man walks down the street, he says,

# Why am I soft in the middle now?

# Why am I soft in the middle? the rest of my life is so hard

# I need a photo opportunity

# I want a shot at redemption

# Don't want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard... #

You can call me Al is really the story of somebody

like me who just,

you know, goes to Africa with no idea, and ends up

having some extraordinary spiritual experience.

# he looks around, around He sees angels... #

"Angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity...

"Amen, hallelujah."

And starts off with, "Why am I soft in the middle?

"The rest of my life is so hard."

Self-obsessed...person

becomes aware.

# Emaweni we baba

Silala emaweni

# Emaweni we baba

Silala emaweni

# Emaweni we baba

Silala emaweni

# We baba Silala emaweni... #

When Mandela finally was let out of jail,

everybody was ecstatic.

-NEWSREEL:

-'Thousands of people gathered,

'waiting for the first words

'in more than 27 years from Nelson Mandela.'

I greet you all

in the name of peace,

democracy and freedom for all!