Callaghanmichael Us Feb 19, 2022

By Jon Pareles
For a project that's earnest, meticulous and politically sensitive, Paul Simon's ''Graceland'' show is also a lot of fun. It arrived Saturday at Radio City Music Hall for the first of five sold-out concerts, interspersing South African-derived songs from Mr. Simon's ''Graceland'' with the music of South Africans themselves.

Apartheid is not forgotten, but the concert has more to do with the caroming wit of Mr. Simon's lyrics and the buoyant-sounding music of South Africa's black workers, a combination that keeps wriggling free of expectations.

What makes the ''Graceland'' tour a milestone is the liveliest, gutsiest backup he has ever had. The band, featuring the South African guitarist Chikapa (Ray) Phiri, bounces and percolates and chatters, whether it's playing mbaqanga (township pop), other South African styles or African-American hybrids. (What seems to have attracted Mr. Simon to mbaqanga, along with the irresistible groove, is the way vocal lines add extra syllables just where American ears least expect it.) For vocals, Mr. Simon is joined by three South African women and by the remarkable 10-man Ladysmith Black Mambazo, South Africa's pre-eminent Zulu choir, which sings in resonant, cathedral-organ chords.

In a tradition of competitive singing called iscathamiya, Zulu choruses do dance routines while they harmonize, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, led by Joseph Shabalala, has great moves. Ladysmith's own unaccompanied selections, in Zulu, call for singing and pointing and soft-shoeing that might steal the show but for the language barrier. The choir also supplies harmonies, and Rockettes-defying footwork, for songs from ''Graceland.''

The concert features two musicians in political exile from South Africa, the singer Miriam Makeba (who was slightly hoarse on Saturday) and the flugelhornist Hugh Masekela. In the two-hour-plus concert, all the performers appeared together and in various combinations.

Direct comments condemning apartheid were made only by Mr. Masekela and Ms. Makeba, clearly a conscious choice. Ms. Makeba sang ''Soweto Blues'' by Mr. Masekela, a bitter song about the 1976 uprising; Mr. Masekela performed a song about Nelson Mandela, the long imprisoned leader of the African National Congress, and the stark ''Stimela,'' depicting the train that brings mine workers into South Africa. (Mr. Masekela also had the show's dud, a pop-jazz ballad by Jon Lucien.) Mr. Simon, the only white performer, addressed racial issues more indirectly. Along with hints in the album's lyrics, on stage he segued his own ''Gumboots'' into ''Whispering Bells'' by the Del-Vikings, from 1957. Hundreds of other 1950's songs fit the three-chord pattern of ''Gumboots,'' but the Del-Vikings are remembered as a racially integrated group.

The show ends on an earnest note, with a Ladysmith Black Mambazo hymn that prays for peace followed by ''God Bless Africa,'' identified as an African national anthem. But the band's limber mbaqanga and Ladysmith Black Mambazo's exuberant story-songs are also signs of the unquenchable spirit of the South African majority.

Callaghanmichael Us Feb 05, 2022

Anne Callaghan attended