And I love the album even more for how Paul Simon did what he did best, music, and engaged with his peers from Africa. Contrast that with Bono and Geldof who invite African musicians to LiveAid as an afterthought and then make them play in an artificial rain forest. When they start playing tours in Africa, I might be faintly interested in them again.

If I remember right Paul Simon is of Romanian or Hungarian Jewish immigrant parents and grew up in New Jersey and NYC listening to radio and street corner Doo-wop.

Put in that light, and looking at history — Simon as a Doo-wop cosmopolitan turned folkie with a family who likely had escaped the Nazi ghetto or worse — (other socio-economic foibles and American recording industry mutations aside) — was there anyway Simon could of more squarely hit the nail on the head than what he did with Graceland?

Have you followed Bela Fleck’s trip to Uganda, Tanzania, Gambia, and Mali and the recordings he did? It’s not at all the same thing, but beyond being a fantastic album, I’ve been impressed (and relieved) with the care with which he’s tried to address the whole issue of cultural appropriation (the album and documentary are called “Throw Down Your Heart”). One of the most interesting things about the entire project, in act, is that a lot of the songs really don’t sound at all fleckish, or rather, he’s really good at essentially recording other musicians and trying to blend into their aesthetic. At least from a musical perspective, it’s one of the most sensitive collaborations of this kind I’ve ever heard: he manages to sound like them, while making it clear that his banjo isn’t to be the center of attention. In some cases, it’s almost a bit laughable; his recording of Ah N’diya with Oumou Sangare just sounds like her recording only with a banjo overdubbed.