It's 1984 and Paul Simon is ready for a change. His previous album, "Hearts and Bones" (1983), has not lived up to his label's expectations. He's been shuttling between Manhattan and Montauk, N.Y., on Long Island, where he's building a beach house he intended to share with his second wife, Carrie Fisher, but as the house is going up, his marriage is crumbling.
Fortunately, he has some upbeat tunes to listen to: Someone sent him a bootlegged cassette of mbaqanga, a type of South African dance music that reminds Mr. Simon of the three-chord pop hits of the 1950s like "Mr. Lee" (1957) by the Bobbettes and "Jim Dandy" (1956) by LaVern Baker.
Mr. Simon is already familiar with the music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a 10-member a capella Zulu choir known for its bass-heavy harmonies. The more he listens to the cassette, the more he likes what he hears and the more his spirits rise. Lenny Waronker, at the time the president of Mr. Simon's label, Warner Bros. Records, later recalls that the singer had "just figured out a way to do dance music his way, and dance music was so powerful in those days." Mr. Waronker tells Mr. Simon he should start working with Nile Rodgers, the producer behind hits by David Bowie, Madonna and others. But Mr. Simon has other ideas. The lackluster performance of "Hearts and Bones" has freed him. "I can do whatever I want," he thinks, and what he wants is to go to South Africa.
But there's a problem. Memories of the Soweto uprising of 1976, in which an estimated 600 people protesting South Africa's apartheid system were killed, are still fresh. In 1980, the United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution calling for all of its members to prohibit cultural exchanges with South Africa, though its vague language presents a challenge, given that cultural expression takes so many forms.
Mr. Simon has no intention of performing in South Africa, but he is aware of the sensitive nature of his desire to record there, so he seeks the advice of industry professionals, including Harry Belafonte, who advises him to go. Belafonte offers to put him in contact with the leadership of the African National Congress, the principal opponent of the apartheid regime. And with that, Mr. Simon is off to Johannesburg with his longtime producer, Roy Halee.
As described in splendid detail by Ashley Kahn in "Days of Miracle and Wonder," the next 1 1/2 years see a total reinvention of Mr. Simon's way of writing and recording songs. On no previous album had he focused so completely on starting with rhythm and harmony tracks and adding melodies and lyrics later. More importantly, on none had he collaborated so completely as he did here with other musicians. In Mr. Kahn's words, "Graceland" would become "the most ambitious, all-in gamble" of Mr. Simon's career." (Mr. Kahn, a music historian who has written books on John Coltrane and Miles Davis, was a member of the "Graceland" tour production team; here he connects the making of the album to politics, the music industry and the individuals involved like no other book of its kind.)
Mr. Simon bonds with the South African musicians immediately. They were used to being treated badly by record executives in their own country as well as by visiting musicians, but even before he arrives, Mr. Simon lets them know they would be getting paid triple the American union scale. "Right away we were treated really first-class, man. First-class, " bassist Bakithi Kumalo recalls. "They bought us lunch."
At Ovation Studios in Johannesburg, Mr. Simon works with musicians from three bands, eventually choosing Mr. Kumalo and two others to continue recording with him in New York. For the South Africans, that trip includes their first passports, their first flight on a plane, their first time leaving their country. And culture shock: At one point in New York, Isaac Mtshali, the drummer, asks, "when do we have to go to register with the police?"
For his part, on "Graceland" Mr. Simon transitions from what he calls "ordinary language" to "enriched language" that "let the words tumble this way and that way." If you compare the steady march of a trademark early Simon & Garfunkel song such as "The Sound of Silence" (1964) with "You Can Call Me Al" (1986) -- the breakaway single from "Graceland" -- the difference is striking: The earlier song is brick-by-brick construction of a bleak urban landscape whereas the later one is a verbal hurricane that almost makes sense. Or at least it makes enough sense: In Mr. Simon's own words, the lyrics "would come by you so quickly that all you would get was a feeling."
The album's very title remains a bit of a mystery. Originally Mr. Simon wanted this record to be global rather than focus on American culture the way his earlier songs did. So why name its title track after Elvis Presley's fabled Memphis home? Initially he thought of the name as a placeholder, but "it wouldn't go away." Eventually he realizes that he doesn't mind "the emotional shadow that Graceland and Elvis casts over the song. In some way I think it adds an emotional punch."
The album becomes everything the musician and his label could hope for. It wins the Grammy for album of the year and, led by the ubiquitous radio play of the bouncy single "You Can Call Me Al," earns the No. 2 Billboard spot for LPs and cassettes sold and No. 1 for CDs.
Yet controversy dogs it: The term "virtue signaling" has not entered the common parlance yet, but on U.S. college campuses and elsewhere, Mr. Simon is confronted by protesters accusing him of defying the U.N. ban. His defenders include Angélique Kidjo, a a singer and political exile from her native Benin, who views the album and subsequent tour as "part of the movement that came around to get Nelson Mandela out of jail." Oliver Tambo, the president of the African National Congress, tells Mr. Simon, "we love you. . . . You're a brother and you have our respect and you're welcome here."
Fittingly, the art on the album's cover is a 15th-century rendering of a knight on a quest, and the outcome of quests are notoriously unpredictable. "There was almost a Don Quixote feel to it," recalls one Warner Bros. executive. "He could be on his way to Graceland."
--Mr. Kirby teaches at Florida State University. He is the author of "Little Richard: The Birth of Rock 'n' Roll."