Graceland during apartheid
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Paul Simon’s choice to break the United Nations boycott to record in South Africa elicited mixed reactions from musicians, leaders and people the world over. Clearly, Simon made the mistake of breaking the cultural boycott that had been imposed by the United Nations against the apartheid administration in South Africa. It is questionable whether the Graceland project did a certain degree of benefit to the anti-apartheid cause. While one can argue that Simon should be credited for bringing the plight of South Africans to the limelight through music as well making the South African music known worldwide, one can also opine that Simon’s decision to record in South Africa was promoting the apartheid regime, that it was another case of white master controlling blacks. In fact, one can quickly conclude that the Graceland project was a suppressive appropriation of the South African culture by the award winning song writer.
The wording of the resolution of the United Nations requesting the rest of the world to cut ties with South Africa was very clear and Simon should have respected the resolution. The UN appealed to “writers, artists, musicians and other personalities to boycott South Africa,” (Beaubien, 1982). Simon’s excuse that art and politics doesn’t mix does not hold. Even when one wants to think that the success of the Graceland album introduced several artists, especially the Ladysmith Black Mambazo (LBM), to a worldwide audience of their own, I still feel that the artists who collaborated with Simon were not treated as equal partners. How could they have been equal partners, yet the apartheid regime demanded that white people such as Simon to be treated as superior?
Reference
Beaubien, M. C. (1982). The Cultural Boycott of South Africa. Africa Today, 5-16.