THE most famous South African album of all is not by a South African but by New Jersey’s Paul Simon, whose 1986 landmark recording Graceland was such a shot in the arm for world music.

Defying the cultural boycott of South Africa, when the country was still under apartheid rule, Simon recorded there with such black African musicians as The Boyoyo Boys, General M D Shiranda and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The likes of the title track and Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes, co-written with Joseph Shabalala, spread the word like never before, to the tune of 14 million album sales.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo and later the Soweto Gospel Choir went on to international success, while Simon made a point of touring with two exiled legends of South African music, jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela and freedom singer Miriam Makeba, when taking Graceland around the world.

Names such as township pop singer Brenda Fassie, pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim and the Mbaqanga supergroup Mahlathini & The Mahotella Queens have made their mark beyond South Africa, too.

To coincide with the World Cup, on June 14 Nascente/Demon Records will release John Amstrong Presents South African Funk Experience, a compilation of “funky, forgotten South African dancefloor gems”: the music that rocked the blacks-only shebeens, brothels and bars of Soweto in the late 1970s and 1980s. Look no further for an introduction to Mbaqanga, Shangaan, Zulu, Jo’Burg funk and spiritual jazz workouts.

As for South African films, let’s start with last year’s sleeper hit: Neill Blomkamp and Peter Robert Gerber’s Oscar-nominated District 9, a sci-fi thriller shot in Johannesburg’s shacks. Bearing the tagline “You are not welcome here”, it depicts an extra-terrestrial race being forced to live in slum conditions on Earth but suddenly finding a kindred spirit in a government agent who is exposed to their biotechnology.

You should also seek out the 1951 version of Cry, The Beloved Country, starring Sidney Poitier; Zola Maseko’s Drum, a 2004 film based on the life of Suoth African investigative journalist Henry Nxumalo; and Tsotsi, the 2005 story of a young street thug in a Soweto slum who steals a car, only to discover a baby in the back seat.

Marlon Brando’s Oscar-nominated turn as a human rights activist in 1989’s A Dry White Season is worth another look, and while the world’s eye will be on the round ball from next weekend, devotees of the odd-shaped variety can relive South Africa’s 1995 Rugby World Cup triumph in this year’s Invictus, the one with Morgan Freeman doing his Nelson Mandela.

• Football footnote: Leeds band Kaiser Chiefs take their name from the first club of former Leeds United and South Africa captain Lucas Radebe.

District 9 will be shown at City Screen, York, on June 15 at 5.30pm as part of York Refugee Week. Admission is free!