Back in the mid-’80s, Paul Simon was in a creative and personal slump. After getting inspiration from a bootleg tape of South African music, Simon flew to Johannesburg and wrote and recorded music with local artists. That music laid the groundwork for his career-resuscitating, Grammy-winning album Graceland in 1986. The making of the album was mired in controversy (Simon made the trip during a cultural boycott, imposed by most of the rest of the world against South Africa’s apartheid regime), and that’s what filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Brother’s Keeper, the Paradise Lost movies) mostly concentrates on in his well-chronicled 2012 documentary Under African Skies. Even though Graceland made Western audiences aware of the eclectic sounds coming out of Africa, the doc strives to answer a question a lot of us had about that album: Was Simon defiantly aiming to bring South African music into the mainstream, or was he just another white dude arrogantly jacking black folks’ music? The film will screen Tuesday night as part of Vanderbilt University’s International Lens series. CRAIG D. LINDSEY
International Lens: Under African Skies
