Graceland

…Simon on his Grammy Award-winning Graceland, one of the best-selling albums of the 1980s, and in 1987 Ladysmith Black Mambazo won its own Grammy in the best traditional folk recording category for the album Shaka Zulu.

Simon’s Grammy Award-winning album Graceland (1986) featured black South African musicians who controversially recorded and toured with him despite a widespread trade boycott of South Africa. The album proved quite popular. In the wake of its success, record stores became more willing to stock world music, including the a…

…musicians with whom he made Graceland (1986), an exquisite multifaceted fusion of his own sophisticated stream-of-consciousness poetry with black South Africa’s doo-wop-influenced “township jive” and Zulu choral music. Although some accused him of cultural thievery—i.e., the appropriation and exploitation of another culture’s music—the album was one of the most critically…