|
|
Third world music is more spiritual than -what do we call it?- first world music? This attitude which I find intensely dispiriting
seems to have great currency among us first world musicians, producers, disc jockeys, record consumers etc. While not arguing
that third world music is or is not more spiritual, I question the notion that spirituality -which may or may not have anything
to do with music- is the domain of other people's music and never our own.
In many ways we are living in rather wonderful times. Intense and authentic aromas of different worlds and cultures are
readily available to we first worlders due to the sophistication of our media. When as a boy, I first heard classical Hindustani
records, I was utterly transfixed and was soon planning a pilgrimage to India equipped only with a sitar I would attempt to
build -unsuccessfully- out of a pumpkin and a two by four. I'm still a big fan of Indian music and feel that it's tremendously
exciting that westerners are able now to appreciate, study and practice it.
Anyone who says that Indian music should only be played by Indians is making -really- a racist remark.
My question is: why should someone disown or even abandon his own culture or, for our purposes, his own cultural music
in favor of that of another culture? Why should not the study and love of another music -Indian, Balinese, Japanese, West
African or whatever- not serve instead as a mirror for one's own music? -or as exciting proof of the interconnectedness of
all music? -or for sheer enjoyment? Why does this notion that our own musical traditions are inherently empty have any currency
at all?
So here we have a new 'groundbreaking' album by Paul Simon called Graceland. He is receiving great praise for opening
our ears to the great popular music of the third world -Africa in particular- by incorporating it and its musicians into his
music.
Before I torch Graceland, let me start with some praise for Paul Simon: I especially like his acoustic guitar playing,
his sense of composition or form, and will readily agree that Simon is very talented. I understand he's receiving a good deal
of flack all around for breaking the UN imposed embargo on South Africa by hiring black musicians from that country. Obviously,
art is one thing and making money by touring and self-promotion is strictly business. Even so, my feeling is that artists
should be exempt from this kind of restriction and my sympathies here lie for the most part with Simon as do now, If I'm not
mistaken, those of the UN. Some people seem to be thinking that Graceland is just another example of the white man exploiting
the black. It's a good point. But how is one to know for sure this is what's happening? It's very difficult and to base any
kind of legislative action, or call for any other kind of 'cease and desist' is I think, dangerous, or at least, foolish.
And in a way, it's foolish also to criticize music or song. If the values of good and bad are in the final analysis not
fixed, then who can say? Obviously: no one. So if I dislike this LP (which I do), why don't I shut up and marvel at how, as
Simon himself once sung, 'one man's ceiling is another man's floor'? It's because there seem to be certain assumptions and
presumptions within the music and the apprehension of his music by its listeners that seem to me false on the gut level. Cosmically,
if a person lies to you, it's all sort of true in a relative sort of way. But I'm not being cosmic here; I'm talking in the
realm of the particular where we call a liar a liar. And what I'm calling Paul Simon/song-smith is a particular kind of liar
called a phony. Ironically, there's something I rather like about his music. So that must make him a likable phony.
But I am dismayed by how seriously he is taken as a songwriter. There have been songs I've liked: 'Mrs. Robinson,' 'Cecilia,'
'El Condor Pasa,' for instance. But whereas 'I Am a Rock'; is good honest teen melodrama, I find supposedly more mature songs
like 'The Boxer' and 'Duncan' to be hopelessly precious: 'pocket full of mumbles' etc. And I entirely lost him when he went
solo. He made no sense to me at all on any level. So I'm left with that all-pervading smell: There's something rotten in the
state of Graceland.
I won't go so far as my friend who follows African music. Simon, he says, should be shot for allowing King Sunny Ade's
name to be misspelled on the liner notes (Play us a song, Sonny!). Let's not start shooting musicians, friend!
I enjoy the playing on this LP and ignore the lyrics and vocals as best as I can. But I can't help but wonder if Simon's
interest in these ethnic and third world artists points to an inner emptiness and boredom. Is he merely trying to spice things
up with new and exciting sounds from exotic places? Or is it after all, just as others insist, the flowering of Simon's all-embracing
humanity? And if the music is good -which it is- who cares?
But too bad Simon has to ruin it with his oo-oo-oo so tender bittersweet and gentle-tough lyrics. I call him a phony and
that's really the issue.
'That Was Your Mother' gets praised for its honest look at parenthood. That would be fine if I could get past the pretend
scenario of mom and pop as youngsters drinking red wine dancing in the shadow of Clifton Chenier and digging those Cajun girls.
Simon throws in some street names so it must be authentic, right? No, he's only fakin' it folks. It's just Happy Days in the
bayou. He might as well have sung it in a French accent. A few years ago, nobody knew anything about Cajun music, and now
here's Simon pretending he's an old Cajun from way back. Doesn't Simon have something peculiarly and originally his own to
Say?
"Original? Just read the lyric sheet," I can hear his defenders say.
I can only reply: yes, he has a style -human trampolines, poor boys (GAK!), African skies and all- but he has nothing
to say.
And why should Simon have something to Say? I don't think any good song ever has something as Concrete as a 'message'
to impart. Songs are just not like that. The confusion arises from the fact that so many of them have messages and politics
-usually those of their authors- as their content. But songs themselves are to be sung out of an odd joy -sometimes raucous,
sometimes melancholy- that appears to sink singer and even listener into the flow of the world. So a good song is just a song
that knows this. And the politics often found within a good song is just an element -no less urgent for being so- but just
an element.
But songs should have something to say in as much as people, when they're worth listening to, have something to say. A
person might say, "Damn those Republicans" or "Look at that interesting cloud." And in the same sort of
way, a song should have something to Say. And I think I even know what Simon's songs are trying to say: they are trying to
say that life is a flowing detached thing much like music itself. Why they don't succeed in this, why they have nothing to
say, is due I feel to an artistic laziness on Simon's part. He does not seem to have personally gone very far into his initial
insight. It's as if he had once opened the doors of the universe, had seen that life was flowing and detached and, slamming
the doors shut again, had turned and dashed back to the recording studio; once there, he refused to acknowledge that his insight
had grown cold and stale. How else could Simon have written something so trite -and I don't mean light- as 'That Was Your
Mother?' Vision or assumption?
Well, what about 'The Boy in the Bubble?' There's a song that makes a definite statement about these troubled times. But,
I don't buy that. There are no guts to the song, just a few pretty observations. But we get neither the crystalline vision
of the detached so-called cosmic mind nor the anger or passion of someone caught in the greater passion of the world. Just
a few clever remarks about the media. 'Don't cry baby. Don't cry.' Time to wake up Mr. Simon. Tine to wake up. Your bubble's
waiting.
Can Simon sing from his guts, from the source of the dilemma of which he makes such pretty pastels? Again, I don't think
the question has ever occurred to him. And by guts, I don't mean I wish he was another Shane MacGowan or even Leonard Cohen.
He could sing from his guts, from the dilemma, and I feel it could be just as effervescent and oo-oo-oo. I might even sing
along then.
'The Mississippi delta was shining like,' Paul Simon tells us in the opening lines of Graceland's title song,'a National
Guitar.' Oddly enough, this reminds me of a line from my own song, 'The Streets Are Wet With Tears.' 'The early summer sun
rose like,' I had decided, 'a bicentennial quarter.' A critic from Sound Choice Magazine applied the thumbscrews to this and
several other lines he found in my LP Dark Ages. Both lines suffer from over cleverness. In my song however, I was trying
to crucify the fool I found myself to be upon a Simonesque parody. The effect was far too subtle and was taken far too seriously
by most people. Still I find the similarity between the two lines curious considering what I was attempting to do and that
Graceland had not yet been written.
Is Paul Simon doing the same thing? Is the hollow cleverness of his opening line deliberately intended to show the hollowness
of Paul Simon as Everyman? (National Guitar, for those who don't know, is the company that makes shiny metal acoustic guitars.)
Taken as a whole. I think we are a lazy people, easily taken in, obsessed with our own comforts, paying only lip service
to the essential issues of life, and a people with little sensitivity for real beauty. I think the hoopla over this LP is
just one more reflection of this fact. And that's the greater tragedy. Those that suggest that Graceland will be good for
the music of the third world are, I hope, not daydreaming.
© 1986 by David Nigel Lloyd
|
|
|
