Song Review: The Rhythm Of The Saints By Paul Simon

The recording I chose on Youtube to write my paper about is entitled, “The Rhythm of the Saints,” by Paul Simon. Paul Simon is an American musician, actor and singer-songwriter. He has received many awards throughout his musical career including a Lifetime Achievement award which is an extremely prestigious award. He has also released many albums to date but his most interesting album, The Rhythm of the Saints is sure to grab the attention of people everywhere, even though there were a majority of bad reviews on this album. Something that makes this song as well as this album interesting is the fact that he recorded this album’s featured percussion tracks in Brazil. By listening to this song, there are no hints given away that says he is a

Achieving a Latin American “feel” is one of the first things that I believe Simon is setting out to do. As the song continues, the drums are immediately followed by what seems to be Latin American musicians singing a specific chant alongside with guitar. As the song continues, Simon begins his verse, “If I have weaknesses, don't let them blind me or camouflage all I am wary of. I could be sailing in seizures of laughter or crawling out from under the heel of love. Do my prayers remain unanswered like a beggar at your sleeve? Olodumare is smiling in heaven, smiling in heaven I do believe.” This song is very similar in the fact that Latin American music can be described to be a medium fast type of song or dance. This song easily accomplishes that by having a medium set tempo. This is one of the easiest things to point out considering Latin American music has many influences. Paul Simon was successful in trying to bring the Latin American influences into a semi-American rhythm. Although there is American influences as far as the instrumentation, there are also world music

The production involves Paul Simon’s vocals as well as a smooth blend of Latin American instrumentation and vocals. The song succeeds because the lyrics express beliefs of religion and positivity. The instrumentation is a decent blend and is not overbearing nor lacking a true Latin American influence. As with any song, there will be both positives as well as negatives. The first thing that I believe he could have done better was to incorporate more instrumentation. The instrumentation that he incorporated is fine, but he could either added more drum or given the Latin American singers an actual verse. By doing this, the song would have had a more Latin influence than it already had. In doing this, the artist needs to take into consideration as to whether he wants to then allow the song to become a duet rather than a solo accompanied by a group. The only other thing that he could have done was make the song longer. Even though this song is four minutes and thirty seconds, when listening, it feels as if the song is shorter. There is not much that I would change about this song. Paul Simon did a good job as far as accomplishing the Latin American influence within an Americanized