As one half of the 1960s folk-rock team, Simon and Garfunkel, Paul Simon's place in pop music history as a first rate songwriter was sealed. But after Simon's split with his partner in 1970, this Newark, New Jersey-born musician went on to not only distinguish himself as a veteran songwriter with a substantial body of work, but as a performer who experimented with a variety of musical genres. Throughout his career as a solo artist, Simon has incorporated salsa, jazz, reggae, gospel, doo-wop, Caribbean, South African, and Brazilian music into his finely crafted pop songs. One of his most well-known works, the Grammy-winning album Graceland, drew both protest and praise for his use of South African musicians during the height of the Apartheid regime in the 1980s. Paul Simon's music-making method is also interesting for the questions of cultural identity and appropriation that it raises...