Of chance accidents and grace

Of late I’ve been wondering about chance – about the minor, unplanned incidents that shift streams of open-ended happenstances and rivulets of odd occurrences into the gigantic oceans which influence the world.

We all of course know about penicillin and its accidental discovery by Alexander Fleming. What we don’t know however – is how penicillin-esque all life is. By that I, of course, don't mean that life is anti-bacterial but that it is fantastically accidental.

Which brings me to the series of accidents that resulted in that magical album that we all love, the album that won the Grammy Album of the Year award in 1987 – Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’

Consider this:

Paul Simon visits a friend in his native New York sometime in the summer of 1984. Knowing Simon’s quite a music devourer his pal slips him an odd cassette he had got hold of that sounded really catchy called – ‘Gumboots: Accordion Jive Hits Vol. II’ Simon stares oddly at the cover and then shrugs and slips it into his car stereo on his drive back home. While driving, the master songwriter, owner of a thousand guitar chords unconsciously swings to the simple yet infectious rhythms of ‘Gumboots,’ ‘it’s a sort of simple three-chord jive with an accordion, guitar, bass and drums.’ He enjoys his drive home and finds himself unconsciously humming a lot of the simple tunes he’s heard.

Life gets back to normal and the cassette remains in Simon’s car – on and off when he wants a bit of music while driving in busy Manhattan, he slips the tape in again and starts grinning and enjoying the infectious tracks. Slowly he begins hearing the tape almost daily.

Later on he plays this music out to some friends of his asking them what style of jive this music is and is it American? Not too many people know and the very basic cassette cover with no information on it except the title can tell him nothing.

He calls the friend who gave him the tape who doesn’t know either because he was gifted this cassette as well. He calls the acquaintance who had come over at a party one day and given him this cassette – and then the information pours in – this is South African township music – the kind called 'mbaqanga' which with another kind of music (an almost rap music form) called 'kwaito' are unique Black South African township creations – specifically the townships around Johannesburg – Sophiatown, Alexandra, Soweto, Orlando.

Intrigued and now seriously curious Simon calls his manager in Warner Brothers and asks him to do some research on this style of music. A call goes out from Warner Bros New York to a distant little-known record producer in isolated, pariah Johannesburg: a man called Hilton Rosenthal. Hilton is known for producing the first multi-racial band in South Africa called Juluka.

Summer spills into autumn and thrilled at this interest shown in a form of music he loves so much Hilton sends Simon 20 or so LPs by post that covers the entire spectrum of black music in South Africa.

Simon spends the cold, snowy, winter months in New York enchanted by the sheer diversity and relentless groove – the cheerfulness and the unbelievable adversity out which this music has come – like the miracle of flowers forcefully, pushing their way in wastelands of weeds – isolated in the beginning – here a bunch, there a group – finally countless flowers, blossoming; in touch, in contact, forcefully pushing their beauty out through the weeds, the wasteland!

Winter turns to spring and Simon’s home exults to the grooves of all that came out of those sweating, sewage-seeping, shack-infested, crime-infested, forcibly settled, townships around all the big South African cities – Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Pietermaritzburg, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth, East London, Grahamstown……

Music played by small, making-ends-meet bands that get together in illegal residential beer halls called shebeens which are run by middle-aged, powerful women called queens. These shebeen queens were the unlikely patrons or rather matrons to these musical forms - kwaito, mbaqanga and uniquely South African - Jazz. It’s here that world-famous artistes like Hugh Masakela and Miriam Makeba had their origins. The sweaty halls where crowds would gather every friday night as friday was pay-day.

The evening would start late as exultant black workers would get off their long bus-rides from the whites-only areas where they were employed to their distant townships, all with money in their pockets. It was also here that gangsters running protection rackets in these slums would collect their weekly dues; duly extorted every friday evening (before the money vanished) as the buses rolled in

Now via the strangest of chances – an accidental tape handed over to Paul Simon in New York, who distractedly played it on his car stereo – this South African sound had thoroughly infected one the world’s most famous singer-songwriters.

Winter was ending and by now – Simon knew all of Rosenthal’s offerings by heart – every jubilant shout, every plaintive wail , every chopping horn solo, every rubbery bass-line, every tribal call-and-response vocal pattern, every sugary African guitar lick.

Through winter the song-writer in Simon came out and bounced over these carefree rhythms and tunes. Independent tunes and lyrics flooded his head – one was with crazy imagery about ‘the boy in the bubble and the baby with the baboon heart’ marveling at these technological ‘days of miracle and wonder.’ Another, a heart-rending journey with his son from his first marriage, to Graceland, where everyone would be received and accepted, in this symbolic rock ‘n’ roll mecca, the home of the first rock ‘n’ roll great Elvis Presley. Others about walking under African skies the land of this music’s origin or about an illicit romance in the streets of Kimberley, the diamond mining capital of the world controlled by De Beers, where a poor boy ‘empty as pocket, with nothing to lose’ woos a rich white girl with ‘diamonds on the soles of her shoes’ – all the songs superimposed on these addictive rhythms on these joyous ta-na-naaa whoops and hollers.

By February Simon’s empty pockets were full of songs and he headed out on the strangest trip of his life – from JFK in Queens to Jan Smuts International airport in Johannesburg – the pariah, outcaste capital of the apartheid ruled country of South Africa – where from the 70s no western band played – and the ones that did were outlawed. Sitting next to Simon was his friend and engineer of many years Roy Halee.

As they landed Simon settled himself in a white hotel in Jo’burg and then completely ignored white South Africa – every second, every moment was spent with the musicians who contributed to that ‘Gumboots’ cassette that he had been given. Tao Ea Matsekha (The Lion of Matsekha) a group from Lesotho, a musician who called himself General M.D. Shirinda and the vocal groups the Gaza sisters and the Boyoyo Boys.

These musicians are heard on ‘The Boy in The Bubble’ and ‘I Know What I Know’ As Simon later recounted: ‘The music for “I Know What I Know” comes from an album by General M.D. Shirinda and the Gaza sisters, a Shangaan group from Gazankulu, a small town near Petersburg in northern South Africa. As more and more Shangaan people migrated to Johannesburg, their music grew and became increasingly popular.’

Simon was struck with wonder when he heard them ‘the distinctive sound of the women’s voices were what attracted me to this group in the first place.’

Simon recorded with all these bands in a couple of orgiastic sessions in the Ovation studios in Johannesburg. Soon Simon was meeting more musicians – he met the stunning bass player Baghiti Khumalo and Ray ‘Chikapa’ Phiri’ the guitarist. With them he recorded the title-track ‘Graceland’ and got them to play for the entire album.

He then recorded ‘Gumboots’ the title track from the cassette that he first fell in love with. The term amazingly connoted a form of music. A form favoured by miners and railroad workers who all wore heavy gumboots that they plodded in to work.

While all this was going on – Simon remembered a BBC documentary he had seen many months back called ‘The Rhythm of Resistance: The Music of South Africa,’ in that he remembered this stunningly powerful a capella vocal group. He tried to remember the episode clearly, the band was called lady..something. He quickly called his studio's sound engineer who immediately exclaimed ‘that’s “Ladysmith Black Mambazo” one of the best loved musical groups in the whole country.’

‘Well, I want to record with them’ said Simon. The only problem was by now Simon was on the last flight out to London on an assignment.

In London, he dreamt of the overpowering choral sound he heard on that documentary. It haunted him – such immense power and spirit and vitality and passion – it was overwhelming. It was like something he had never heard before, neither in the black gospel choirs in America or in vocal jazz groups – this was unique, amazing! He dreamt of where these boys were from – the engineer said they came from Ladysmith, hence the name, a town near Durban in Natal. He kept mulling over his experiences in Soweto, that world-famous township that symbolized for the world both apartheid and the resistance to it.

Inchoate words formed in his head, he gazed out of his hotel window, to rain drenched streets that he immortalized in ‘Kathy’s Song’ so many years back, but this time it wasn’t any normal poorly lit, glistening street but the dark night in Johannesburg, in South Africa that flooded before his vision – haunting and inky black.

‘We are homeless, homeless
Moonlight sleeping on the midnight lake’

The words came and the plaintive melody began humming in his ears, spilling on to his tongue – ‘homeless, homeless, moonlight sleeping on the midnight lake’ – the rolling hills, the smoky townships, the cape flats, the table mountain, the winelands, the Bantu homelands, the british port of Durban, zulu settlements, xhosa clicks, coloured minstrels, everything – a hodge-podge of sensations almost burst his heart – He screamed – ‘HOMELESS, HOMELESS, MOONLIGHT SLEEPING ON THE MIDNIGHT LAKE’ the despair of it, the beauty of it, the pain of it – a pain that he as a jew could palpably feel from his parents and grandparents – refugees from Hungary, refugees escaping pogroms and persecution – homeless in New York.

He woke up bleary-eyed and drove to a familiar recording studio and called a shift engineer to set the recording for him and strummed and sang his lines late into the night.

Early next morning a demo tape of his singing was couriered to a surprised Joseph Shabalala, the leader of the 10 man black choir – Ladysmith Black Mambazo. With a note asking him to spontaneously complete the rest in his native zulu.

A month later the two met for the first time in the famous Abbey Road studios in London – the crossing that the world saw the Beatles walk across on their Abbey Road album cover – the studios that saw the recordings of The Dark Side of The Moon, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – countless albums were produced and countless melodies that are now immortal were hummed in it’s padded corridors and carpeted canteens. Simon was adding to that list with ‘Homeless’ a stunning vocal song, a landmark on his new album.

A year had now passed and Paul Simon had spent many months with many New York musicians adding finishing touches to his Johannesburg tapes at the Hit Factory in Manhattan.

By 1986 the album was ready for release. Simon was himself amazed – he occasionally blinked or pinched himself to believe that this release of his was a reality – it didn’t sound like Paul Simon at all – it was novel – it was like nothing he had ever done or composed – it was as though he had been granted an African soul gratis – without asking for it or paying for it. There it was – that soul – that came to him by accident, now stamped, packed and sealed and lying in front of him in three formats – in an LP, cassette and the newly discovered CD – waiting for him to sign a hundred copies before this Manhattan megastore opened in the morning and listeners trooped in lining up to buy the first few autographed copies. He stared at the slowly evaporating, alcohol smelling felt marker in his hand – gazing at it hypnotized, half smiling half dazed with song lines running like a ticker tape in his mind.

‘Graceland, Graceland – I’m going to Graceland’

Shouts, whoops and hollers in the Johannesburg studios.

‘And I maybe obliged to defend,
Every love every ending
Or maybe there’s no obligations now’

He felt free, unfettered – like this sound in the enslaved townships had reached and freed him. A free man enslaved and freed by a slave, enslaved. The paradox of it! The accident of it! The miracle of it! He felt deeply religious for those few moments – intensely connected, sublimely spiritual, in trance.

‘Maybe I’ve reason to believe
We all will be received
In Graceland.’

He smiled and signed the first copy.