Stevie Wonder
Posted By venita on July 7, 2008
On July 1st, we went to see Stevie Wonder perform at Fiddlers Green in South Denver. In a word, Amazing!! He is an old school show man. He has an amazing band with his daughter Aisha as one of the three backup singers. The percussion was amazing. He played an awesome set with old and new music, such as Baby Girl (new), Mon Cherie Amour, Isn’t She Lovely, Superstition, Higher Ground, and much much more. His daughter sang a solo as well. And after she finished, he asked the audience to sing to her! So we all sang “Isn’t She Lovely”. He sang as well. And about a quart of the way through the song, he stopped singing. Why? Because he started to cry, then she started to cry, and I started to cry as well. But, the audience kept singing and his band kept on playing. He finally gathered himself together to play part of the song with his harmonica. It was awesome we all finished the song together.
Not long before that, he played Sha la la la la, I Love You and Have You Seen Her, which led into “Higher Ground”. With that song I was (and the crowd) were on our feet singing again. I could still remember the words, when the song came out, and what was going on in my life and the US at the time. Then tears started to well up in my eyes as I remembered visiting and hanging out with my cousins in South Central LA in the late sixties and early seventies. And I remember in particular two of my cousins, who have since left this world. I realized when someone dies, regardless of age; the pain never really goes away. It just returns at an inexplicable moment with varying degrees of intensity.
Stevie would later comment that “Time is long and life is short.” And he said that if you have issues with family or friends, try to let go and get over it. And as he closed the show with Superstition playing in the background, he said we need to unite as one people and make a change (a direct reference to Barak Obama). I thought that took a lot of courage in a definitively Red state.
His final words were “impossible is an unacceptable word.” I realized that this man grew up blind and black in the some of the most tumultuous times in American history, and he can say “impossible is an unacceptable word.”
God brings us lessons at the most unexpected times and places.
What a great post. I’ve often wondered how he was doing. I never hear about him anymore. I used to pray regularly for him when he was popular (80′s?) and I know God heard and answered my prayers for him.
Nancy