Paul Simon and the shrill left

The opinion on Paul Simon’s famous Graceland album seems finally to have swung 180 degrees from where it once was. Simon recorded the music — which has just bee re-released — with black African performers (mostly) in South Africa in 1986 and was of course castigated by the authoritarian left for ‘breaking’ the cultural boycott against the apartheid state. I mean, really castigated; placed in the same rrrraaaaaccccissssst category as those cricketers who played games against South Africa’s white-only cricket team.

Now, however, it seems to be accepted that it was a wise and even liberating decision from the singer, and has done much to bring African music to a wider and richer audience. Without Graceland would there have been the equally preppy and smug 2008 New York equivalent, Vampire Weekend? ‘I neither know nor care,’ I can hear many of you thinking to yourselves. But my point is that the left was wrong, back in ’86, and now seems to accept that it was wrong. It’s called the Honeyford Effect: time passes and you realise just how shrill and absurd the left sounded.

As to the music, well I never much liked Paul Simon; too mimsy and prolix and precious for my liking.