The documentary ‘Under African Skies’ starts with Paul Simon going back to South Africa and falling in the arms of every musician he played with during the making of his Grammy winning album 'Graceland'.
But right away, it makes us enter into the political controversy surrounding the album, with, on one side, Paul Simon’s occulted vision and only desire to make music with other talented people – ‘I was invited by Black musicians’ he says to his detractors – and on the other side, people like Dali Tambo, the founder of Artists Against Apartheid attacking him for violating the boycott against Apartheid.
We follow Simon back to South Africa, where he recorded 'Graceland' and witness the rehearsal of an intimate performance he gave in Johannesburg with the original musicians for the 25th anniversary of the album. Despite Simon’s honest admittance of his unawareness of the political situation, we can’t help thinking how naïve he was. There were a lot of ‘I don’t know’ about South Africa, he says while telling his story, which started with a South-African music K7 he was given, and him falling in love with the music. Simon describes his travel to South Africa as an irresistible adventure. ‘I didn’t tell Harry, but I should have’ says Simon about Harry Belafonte, who had warned him he should have let the ANC know.
A few times during the documentary, Simon admits he was ‘absolutely unprepared’ for what was about to follow, first his journey to South Africa under the terrible Apartheid regime, with struggles and shooting in the streets, secondly, the criticisms after the release of 'Graceland' and the protests during the world tour.
If he was unprepared, the South African musicians were too, so isolated from the rest of the world in this racist society, that many of them didn’t know who Simon was. You said Simon and Garfunkel? ‘It didn’t ring a bell’ says Bakhiti Kumalo.
Little by little, we meet all the musicians and bands which inspired the music and contributed to 'Graceland', like General MD Shirinda and The Gaza sisters, The Boyoyo Boys, The Ladysmith Black Mambazo,… or let me rephrase this… musicians and bands who literally made the music, since, when you hear the demos, the original traditional melodies sound damn close to Simon’s songs! The genius of Paul Simon was to actually go there and ‘steal’ these rhythms and voices, rearrange them, poppify them into hits for a multi racial audience, and especially make this music known to the whole wide world.
It is funny to hear that, despite the controversy, not one single South African musician has a bad thing to say about Simon, they all defend him, and none of them give the impression to have been robbed.
‘Our music is always regarded as third world music’, says Koloi Lebona, ‘If our music gets a chance to be part of mainstream music, truly, that can do any harm’.
The 10 or 12 days that Simon was in South Africa were made of intense recording sessions with African bands, and according to him, some exhilarating time with people who didn’t even speak English. Simon remembers there was absolutely no pressure, as he was feeling totally free after having his first big commercial failure with ‘Hearts and Bones’.
Dali Tambo, who now appears to be in excellent terms with Simon, thought Simon’s visit to Johannesburg was not helpful at that moment, ‘It was not about Paul Simon’, he says, ‘It was about liberation of South Africa’….’ If you go there you are part of Apartheid’.
During the whole time, Simon felt nevertheless disconnected from the political context, ‘I thought about writing political songs but I am not really good at it’, he says at one point. And his main argument is that he treated each musician equal to himself, he regarded them as friends… At each moment, he sounds sincere and naïve at the same time, pursuing his quest and ignoring the world around him
His reunion with Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s Joseph Shabalala is especially touching, as the two men still call themselves brothers, ‘He came like a baby,… father can you teach me something?’ says Joseph about Paul Simon. After recording 'Homeless’ at Abbey Road in London, Simon invited the musicians in New York City to finish the album, and to give an idea of the situation, these guys went, in a few days, from asking where they could get a permit to visit Central Park to playing Saturday Night Live and being the hippest act on the planet.
Between footage of the rehearsal for the reunion concert in South Africa, footage of the 1986 recordings, and clips of Quincy Jones, Oprah, David Byrne, Paul McCartney, Philip Glass, Lorne Michaels and others, the documentary let us better understand the complexity of the situation, the intensity of the criticism of a rich white guy from NYC who sat at the top of African singles, while breaking the UN cultural boycott, but, at the same time, whose best intentions were endorsed by music legends like Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba and even Harry Belafonte. 'Why should politicians dictate what artists should do?' Simon asks.
At the end, the success of the Graceland tour, the decision to sing the South African hymn after each performance, the celebration of the concert in Zimbabwe, and after the fall of the Apartheid, the invitation by Mandela, all speak for themselves. Especially, Simon and Dali Tambo giving themselves the biggest hug ever at the end of the movie translates the power of the artist and the triumph of music over politics.