In the mid-1980s, Paul Simon was looking for a way forward. What he found, beginning with a cassette of South African Township Jive, would become ‘Graceland,’ an enormously successful album, a political landmark, and the center of a fierce argument about art, politics, and apartheid. In his new book, ‘Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland.’
Music historian Ashley Kahn reconstructs how it all happened, drawing on extensive research and interviews with nearly one hundred people connected to the album. Kahn knows this territory from the inside. He worked on the Graceland Tour and later managed Ladysmith Black Mambazo. A Grammy winning writer, producer, and NYU professor, he has chronicled classic recordings by Miles Davis and John Coltrane and co-wrote Carlos Santana's autobiography.
