Days of Miracle and Wonder by Ashley Kahn

Join us for a conversation with Ashley Kahn to celebrate his new book, a comprehensive history of the origins, anecdotes, and collaborations that went into the production of Paul Simon's timeless album, Graceland. He will be in conversation with Bakithi Kumalo and Mark Corbin, moderated by David Fricke. The conversation will be followed by a signing.

PLEASE NOTE: RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30 pm.

Can't attend? (please specify that you would like it signed in the comments box at checkout).

The definitive story of the making and legacy of Graceland, Paul Simon’s still-beloved, career-topping 1986 album, drawn from extensive research and exclusive interviews with nearly 100 participants and witnesses: musicians, producers, engineers, record executives and journalists from Africa, the US, and Europe.
In 1984, Paul Simon was at a professional and personal crossroads. His new marriage was failing and his career was in danger of stalling. He was forty-two, navigating a digital age, searching for inspiration in a scene driven by music videos, synthesizers, and drum machines.
Driving around that summer, a bootleg cassette of “township jive” — the street music of South Africa—kept him company. Lent to him by a friend, it reminded Simon of the sound and the joy of the early days of rock and roll. He began to invent his own lyrics to the groove, and became drawn to the idea of recording with the musicians on that tape. But South Africa was in the thrall of a racist apartheid system, and with economic and cultural boycotts in place, such an undertaking was risky. He grew determined to find the right conditions to allow for a collaboration.
Simon took a fateful trip to Johannesburg in 1985. It would turn out to be the first step on a musical journey that would lead him to New York, Los Angeles, Louisiana, and London, and eventually to the release of Graceland, a critical and commercial triumph, winning multiple Grammys, selling 16 million records, and spawning a five-year, worldwide tour.
Days of Miracle and Wonder is the first book to tell the full story of Graceland, offering windows into Simon’s creative process, the technical innovations that brought his songs to life, the people and places that made the album possible, the forces that helped the album achieve mainstream reach, and the controversies that the music raised — and which remain today. It sheds light on a period when America opened its doors to the sounds and styles of Africa and other faraway lands.
This is an informed, heartfelt celebration of Simon’s magnum opus, a recording forged in a tense cultural moment, but suffused with hope, change, and a sense of global connection.

Ashley Kahn is a Grammy Award–winning music historian, author, and producer. He cowrote Carlos Santana’s autobiography The Universal Tone, and has written books on such legendary recordings as Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. He was a member of the Graceland tour production team, and tour manager for Ladysmith Black Mambazo. He teaches at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music.

Bakithi Kumalo (Bah-Gee-Tee Koo-Ma-Low) is an award-winning, multi-instrumentalist best known for prowess on the electric bass, and his work in the studio and onstage with a wide range of popular artists including Hugh Masekela, the Grateful Dead, Sting, Stevie Wonder, John Legend, Gloria Estefan, Derek Trucks, Miriam Makeba, Angelique Kidjo, and, most significantly, Paul Simon. His signature, vocal-like sound on the fretless bass helped define Simon’s career-topping 1986 album Graceland, and pulled him into the international spotlight. He is currently ranked among the top 50 bass players in the world by Bass Player magazine, and his skills extend to his solo work as a singer, percussionist, pianist and songwriter. Born in the Soweto township of Johannesburg, South Africa surrounded by relatives who loved music and actively performed, Kumalo was inspired by traditional African rhythms and a cappella vocal groups as well as American jazz and rhythm-and-blues. He learned to follow the groove of the bass lines and developed licks based on the left-hand work of accordion players in township bands. His first gig found him filling in for his uncle’s bass player at the age of seven, and he became an in-demand session player in South Africa’s recording scene during the 1970s and early 1980s.

Introduced to Paul Simon through producer Hendrick Lebone during recording sessions for the Graceland album in 1985, Kumalo traveled with Simon to New York to finish the record, achieving renown for his groundbreaking bass line in "You Can Call Me Al," his pocket grooves from "Boy In The Bubble" and "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes," and his overall fretless bass sound. After a few years touring with Simon, he eventually settled in the United States, working prolifically in studios and on stages, and releasing several solo albums.

David Fricke is a music journalist and the host of The Writer's Block on Sirius XM Radio. He was a staff writer at Rolling Stone for three decades, is a regular contributor to MOJO. He is a Grammy-nominated writer of album liner notes and a four-time winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in music journalism.

Mark Cobrin is a New York City based sound designer, mixer and recording engineer working in both post-production and music production. He has mixed and created sound design for hundreds of television and radio commercials and has recorded and mixed over one hundred music albums and numerous live concerts. His advertising clients have included Nissan, Tanqueray and Google. He sat behind the recording desk for major pop stars like Paul Simon, Madonna, George Benson, as well as jazz stalwarts like William Parker. He played guitar in Karl Berger's Improvisers Orchestra, and was a graduate of the prestigious Berklee School of Music.

Famously, Cobrin played an important role in the Graceland recording and mixing sessions in New York City’s The Hit Factory in 1985 and ’86, working side-by-side with Simon and engineer Roy Halee for more than a year. Cobrin’s familiarity with both analog and digital recording formats made him an invaluable part of those sessions. Twenty-five at the time and one of The Hit Factory’s newer engineers, he already had recording experience with Stevie Nicks, Glenn Frey, and Simon Townshend, and had worked with the noted producer Eric “ET” Thorngren, then one of the reigning kings of twelve-inch remixes.