The Rhythm of the Saints

As Graceland drew on South Africa, this record drew on Brazil. Simon travelled there five times in 1988 and 1989. In Salvador, Bahia he heard the ensemble Grupo Cultural Olodum rehearsing and recorded them two days later, and the result became the opening track, The Obvious Child. He built many of the songs around polyrhythmic percussion and wrote the chord changes afterwards, which he called more adventurous than those on Graceland. Eddie Palmieri had encouraged the trip by telling him that the journey of the drum goes with the slave trade from West Africa to Brazil and up the Caribbean. The Coast was co-written with the guitarist Vincent Nguini, and Spirit Voices has Portuguese lyrics by Milton Nascimento.

He delayed the release from September 1990 because he thought the mixes and sequencing were not right. The album reached number one in Britain and number four in America, selling more than 1.3 million copies in its first month, though radio resisted it: Simon recalled programmers calling it too exotic for AOR. The Obvious Child reached number 92 on the Hot 100 and number 15 in Britain. He played the songs for around 500,000 people in Central Park on 15 August 1991, a concert released as Paul Simon's Concert in the Park. It earned Grammy nominations for Album of the Year and Producer of the Year.