Just One Question

Music Professor Robert Walser: What MAKES MUSIC STAR Paul Slmon "POSTMODERN"?

I HAVE IN MIND Simon's Graceland album, although some of his other work takes up issues and exemplifies tactics that have been called postmodern. A song like "Boy in the Bubble" grapples with the contradictions of our technology and media-saturated environment: "lasers in the jungle," and "the way the camera follows us in slo-mo / the way we look to us all." More important, perhaps, is the fact that Simon's voice rides on top of the complex, joyous, rocking beat of a group of South African pop musicians. Simon's album seems to promote cultural interaction, the free exchange of music and perspectives across cultural boundaries. Yet, on the other hand, he was roundly criticized for using these musicians rather than collaborating with them; also, in the process of producing this album, he broke an artists' boycott of South Africa, intended as a statement against apartheid. Thus Graceland illustrates the thorny politics of inter-cultural art, particularly in a post-war, post-colonial, commercial, and media environraent. raent. The album appears to have helped bring the injustice of apartheid to the attention of many Americans. Yet there are disturbing stories about Simon's appropriation of various music, including that of Los Lobos. An African friend of mine admitted that many South African musicians became famous as a result of working with Simon, but he pointed out that "famous" here means "known to the West"; these musicians were already famous in Africa. It is easy to see Simon's placement of introspective yuppie lyrics over pre-existing music as another example of Western arrogance and exploitation of exotic Others, at the same time that one might enjoy the music and respect its political effects. So both the songs themselves and the process of their production necessarily raise a variety of issues that are often called postmodern.

Last summer Music 1, a courseteam-taught by musk professors TedLevin and Robert Walser, wasprovocatively advertised in TheDartmouth with a series of questions, including: "What makesPrince, Paul Simon, and LaurieAnderson 'postmodern

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Robert Walser