DAYS OF MIRACLE AND WONDER

A no-stone-unturned history of the making of a magisterial record.

In 1988, writes music historian Kahn, former Clash leader Joe Strummer, nearing 40, told a reporter, “I don’t like the idea that people who aren’t adolescents make records. Adolescents make the best records. Except for Paul Simon. Except for Graceland.” Yet that record, said to be Simon’s personal favorite as well, was born almost accidentally: A fellow musician loaned Simon a tape of African music, thinking of incorporating some of the sounds into her own work, and Simon took the idea (and the cassette) and ran with it. Ironically, some of those sounds were oldies, and, given that South Africa, the epicenter of that music, was an apartheid state under international censure, he courted controversy by traveling to that country and looking up groups, such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo. It didn’t help that erstwhile Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren had recorded South African artists without paying them (according to Simon) or that Steven Van Zandt was building his powerful “Sun City” boycott movement. Simon was well-received, though, and he built his album using both digital and analog technology while painstakingly constructing his songs measure by measure with an ensemble of 25 artists. The result was a triumph, both advancing the anti-apartheid cause and bringing South African music to a broad audience and winning the Grammy for best album of the year for 1986. Kahn turns in some revealing moments in his narrative, including an account of the origin of the album’s title in an impromptu visit Simon made to Elvis Presley’s grave that affected him more deeply than Simon had expected. As Kahn notes, Graceland has become what is known as a “catalog classic” that has never gone out of print—and that remains in heavy rotation around the world.

A deeply researched, lively study of a beloved staple of world music.