POOR PAUL SIMON

Poor Paul Simon has found himself mired in a most perfect Catch 22. “Graceland,” however, is essentially an anti-apartheid document.

By exploring a black South African musical idiom with black South African musicians, Simon has subverted Pretoria’s dogma that implicitly states that apartheid must exist because blacks--and, consequently, their cultural forms--are inferior.

Rather than parley with the immorality of such perverse contentions, Simon allows us to judge by displaying one of those inferior cultural forms--the music--for us, and it is sublime.

All those angry ideologues who argue that Simon’s lyrics should have been more overtly political display their cultural ignorance. Had they studied art theory rather than Marx they would have learned that within form there can be found a most eloquent content.

DANTON S. MILLER

Woodland Hills