We’re not supposed to call people “homeless” anymore. Advocates prefer the term “unhoused,” because “homeless” supposedly casts blame on the victims themselves. Others disagree. They think “unhoused” comes across as bureaucratic language that muffles the emotional impact that “homeless” carries.
It’s an important distinction. As the adage admonishes, “A house is not a home.” A house provides shelter from the elements. A home provides comfort that goes beyond the merely physical. In that regard, the people who have been residing in Wilmington’s Christina Park were unhoused, but it was a place that, however meager, they could call home.
Turning a public park into an urban encampment was only a short-term solution, but the implication was that the city would formulate a long-term plan before relocating the people living there. Other options have been found for some, but not all, of the park residents, who are now not only unhoused but untented.
“Graceland,” released in 1986, was Paul Simon’s best-selling album. It was also his most criticized, mainly because he recorded it with South African musicians at a time when the nation was under a cultural boycott for its apartheid policies. But he was also disparaged for plundering the country’s isicathimiya music for several songs.
It was neither the first nor last time he created a tune by writing English lyrics to someone else’s melody. In the case of “Homeless,” he shared the songwriting credit with Joseph Shabalala, the lead singer of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, who took the melody from a traditional Zulu wedding song.
Simon’s English lyrics are just a literal translation of Shabalala’s Zulu, which channels the loneliness of miners and laborers who had to travel far from home to find work. Shabalala used strong wind as a metaphor for what rendered the singer homeless, when the real culprit could be summed up as capitalism – the same thing that created the tent village in Christina Park.
Despite the exploitative nature of the collaboration, “Graceland” introduced Ladysmith Black Mambazo to an international audience that quickly embraced them, leading to five Grammy Awards. Shabalala, who died in 2020, formed the vocal group with a bunch of his brothers and cousins in 1960, and several still tour with them today. “Homeless,” which they re-recorded in 2006, remains part of their repertoire.
One very positive element of Graceland is that it introduced the world to Bakithi Kumalo, one of the great bass players of his generation.