FAMOUS pop star Paul Simon is in Johannesburg; the Ovation Studios, sometime in 1985. You can pretty much see it happening ... The great American sound engineer Roy Halee turns the knobs. In the studio, Simon and a handful of South Africa's best musicians are developing a groove for which Simon will later write lyrics and which will become the first track on the album Graceland: “The Boy in the Bubble."
Simon asks one accordionist, Forere Motloheloa, not to change the music with each run-through. He has to play what Simon asks him to play. Motloheloa turns around highly annoyed. Grabs a knobkerrie and wants to clobber Simon right there in the studio. The other musicians have to keep him in check.
Motloheloa's accordion introduction became the dazzling opening sound of Graceland. One could say it embodies the soul of the music. And that piece of music, Joe Boyd tells us in his book And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music, made Paul Simon decide that he was onto something with his South African experiment: “It was like an announcement: You haven't heard this before!"
The irony, Boyd points out, is that the world had already taken note of South African music – and Zulu music in particular. It began in 1853, when a Zulu choir visited London and gave performances. Charles Dickens was one of the people who went to listen. He responded to the Zulu chant with his terrible essay “The Noble Savage", which he concludes with these words: “My position is, that if we have anything to learn from the Noble Savage, it is what to avoid. His virtues are a fable; his happiness is a delusion; his nobility, nonsense." Charles Dickens of all people.
Boyd then tells of Solomon Linda and his group, the Evening Birds, who recorded a song in the late 1930s about a Zulu boy braving lions in the woods. It was called “Mbube", and was issued in South Africa on the day in 1939 when Hitler's troops invaded Poland. By 1948, 100,000 copies had been sold.
One of these reached Pete Seeger via musicologist Alan Lomax. Seeger misheard the title with his American ears, thought it was uyimbube, and created his own version of it titled “Wimoweh". These were later recorded by The Tokens as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight".
The Western world knew Zulu music, with a detour. When Paul Simon discovered mbaqanga in 1985, he was by no means a pioneer. But he did one thing that no one had done before – he assimilated musical culture without Westernising it. The lyrics? That's another story.
And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music is a monumental publication. On paper, it is 1,317 pages long. But this volume is slim considering the musical and cultural field he engages. In addition to South African music, he rigorously explains how the music of India, Latin America, the Caribbean regions and Eastern Europe has enriched the larger musical field.
One thing Paul Simon experienced in making Graceland is that the musicians he collaborated with were surprised that he found so much resonance with “old" music. Why didn't he rather use the new music of the time? That scenario repeated itself in various guises. Would Ravi Shankar and Indian music ever have invaded the collective Western mind if George Harrison of The Beatles hadn't introduced Shankar to the world?
Well, jazz giant John Coltrane met Shankar as early as the early 1960s, and that encounter is reflected in his famous version of “My Favourite Things" (1961, and yes, it's the Sound of Music song), in which he intertwines Indian musical theory and techniques with his own jazz interpretation. But it was only when The Beatles used a sitar on “Norwegian Wood" on the album Rubber Soul (1965), that music lovers sat up and took notice.
And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music is loaded with fascinating anecdotes. Boyd explains why the Soviet authorities did everything in their power to silence Bulgarian women's choirs, and how it came about that Paul Anka rewrote French minstrel Claude François's “Comme d'habitude" for Frank Sinatra, and the song “My Way" became Sinatra's last big hit. But Sinatra's career had been saved by another artist before. When Sinatra had a hit in 1967 with Antônio Carlos Jobim's “The Girl from Ipanema", it was already known among jazz aficionados from the version by Brazilian singer Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz.
The musical story that Boyd tells makes numerous wonderful digressions. He is a musicologist with a rich understanding of diverse musical cultures. His explanation of the political side effects, feuds and uproar after the release of Graceland testifies to a very thorough understanding of South African politics as it developed from the 1980s to the 1990s. Because it comes into play so early in the book, it helps the reader to accept the authority of his other analyses.
I have to admit that from the outset I was positively inclined towards Boyd. He was actively involved (as owner of the famous UFO Club in London) during the early years of Pink Floyd. He had previously worked with artists such as Muddy Waters, Coleman Hawkins, and Stan Getz. He was involved in the inner circle when Bob Dylan made his electric debut at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Next came the Floyd, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny and the Incredible String Band. As production leader, he worked with R.E.M., Maria Muldaur, and Toots and the Maytals.
All of this adds up to two playlists for me. It's a long, thick book. Listen as you read!
And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music by Joe Boyd costs $39.45 (R679.58) at Amazon.
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Kerneels Breytenbach is a former publisher and journalist from Cape Town. He also authored the short story collection Morsdood van die Honger, the novels Glimlag, Piekniek by Hangklip, Ester, and Hond se Gedagte, and the cookbook Die Lekkerste Lekker. He often writes for magazines about food and restaurants, and as a journalist has also become known as an expert on pop music.
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