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Ashley Kahn

Biography

Ashley Kahn

Ashley Kahn is a Grammy Award–winning music historian, author and producer. He cowrote Carlos Santana’s autobiography, THE UNIVERSAL TONE, and has written books on such legendary recordings as Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. He was a member of the Graceland tour production team, and tour manager for Ladysmith Black Mambazo. He teaches at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music.

Ashley Kahn

Books by Ashley Kahn

Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland
by Ashley Kahn - History, Music, Nonfiction

In 1984, Paul Simon was at a professional and personal crossroads. Driving around that summer, a bootleg cassette of “township jive” --- the street music of South Africa --- kept him company. He began to invent his own lyrics to the groove and became drawn to the idea of recording with the musicians on that tape. But South Africa was in the thrall of a racist apartheid system, and such an undertaking was risky. Simon took a fateful trip to Johannesburg in 1985. It would turn out to be the first step on a musical journey that would lead him to New York, Los Angeles, Louisiana and London, and eventually to the release of Graceland, a critical and commercial triumph that spawned a five-year worldwide tour. DAYS OF MIRACLE AND WONDER is the first book to tell the full story of Graceland.