Last night David Byrne jumped on stage with Paul Simon at BAM for the Paul Simon: Under African Skies event, where Simon and guests revisit songs from Graceland and The Rhythm Of The Saints. NME has the lowdown on the Byrne/Simon hoedown…

 

Via NME:

Kaissa, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Vusi Mahlasela, Luciana Souza and Cyro Baptista also performed alongside the legendary New Yorker, who sang vocals on just a handful of songs during the show, preferring to remain in the background playing guitar for most of it.

Simon rarely spoke to the audience throughout the event, except to dedicate a song to friend and collaborator Milton Nascimento, who was recently hospitalized and unable to perform.

The event is part of an unprecedented month-long residency at Brooklyn Academy Of Music, which has already seen Simon perform a set entitled ‘Songs From The Capeman,’ based on his musical of the same name.

He will return to BAM on April 23 for another set called ‘American Tunes.’

David Byrne took to the stage for three songs, adopting lead vocals on ‘I Know What I Know’ and ‘You Can Call Me Al’ while Simon himself brought the show to a close with a rousing rendition of ‘Graceland.’

We haven’t found any video yet, but when we do, we’ll post it. Is it strange that Simon’s resting the vocal cords so much in favor of being an axe man strumming chords? Bad joke. Speaking of which: They “forgot” to invite Wyclef and his three-stringed guitar. You can read that any way you want.

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Comments (3)
  1. As multiple people in the comments of the original post pointed out, Wyclef is actually playing a six stringed guitar. Three strings are metal wrapped nylon and three are clear (or black) nylon strings that don’t show up well in the video. If you watch 2:37 into the video you can see Wyclef play strings that you say don’t exist.

  2. jraddy  |   Posted on Apr 11th, 2008

    Yeah – its called a classical guitar. You’d think a music editor would know that. Jesus who’s writing this site these days??? This is about as bad as the Michael Stipe “coming out of the closet” story – 10 years after he did.

  3. Dr. Doughnuts  |   Posted on Apr 13th, 2008

    where’s the audio????

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