Saturday was Stevie Wonder day, which was apparent from a midday venture into the Gospel Tent, where Kim Che’re opened up with an inspirational and very rocking version of Stevie’s “Higher Ground,” a song that pretty much offers a synopsis of Wonder’s career aspiration to use music as a force for social and spiritual enlightenment. Backed by three backing vocalists and the slamming house band at the Gospel Tent, Kim plumbed the song’s message in both secular and spiritual terms:
“Teachers, keep on teaching,” she sang, then added, “All the teachers in the audience raise your hands!” A lot of hands went up. “Preachers, keep on preaching!” The same shout out brought fewer raised hands. But the point is there’s an urgency to Stevie’s lyric, a call to public action that has been a hallmark of a career in which he’s never shied from political controversy. Calling on teachers to keep teaching at a time when Trump’s education secretary, the vile oligarch Betsy DeVos, is trying to dismantle the American public education system, is politics at its cutting edge. Stevie is gonna tell it like it is, and his songs will keep doing it even when he’s not there to do it himself. Just as he did with the uplifting tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, “Happy Birthday.” Stevie may be the person most responsible for getting Dr. King’s birthday declared a national holiday.
Photo by Elsa Hahne.
It’s no surprise, then, that “Higher Ground” was very close to the beginning of Wonder’s own set this Saturday. Eight years ago, at his last Jazz Fest performance, Stevie was promoting the candidacy of Barack Obama kept urging during the set, repeatedly urging the crowd: “Don’t be afraid to win!” This time he couldn’t even bring himself to utter the current president’s name, referring to him as “45.”
He had a message for the current occupant of the White House: “God gave him the position he’s in for a purpose,” he said during a lengthy opening address to the audience. “To bring us together again. Divisiveness is not a solution.” One surly guy next to me standing at the back of the crowd shouted out “Just sing…” As if Stevie could hear him. I thought he was going to drop the “N” word but he was silenced by icy stares from all around. The statues are over there, buddy…
The crowd was as big as any I’ve seen at the Acura stage – maybe there were more for Aretha, it’s hard to tell with the addition of the grandstands – and Stevie, dressed in an orange, brown and turquoise dashiki, engaged them in a spirited, hit-packed show. The band teased the reggae groove of “Jammin’” to the crowd’s delight but Stevie stopped them and said “This is a celebration of life so clap your hands!”
He then got the crowd to sing the chorus, a trope that worked at various spots in the set. The band was tight, with two guitarists who played some terrific back-and-forth solos and an intense rhythm section. Stevie’s voice is still strong and his keyboard work on several instruments was as great as ever. The only parts of the set that didn’t project well to the festival crowd were the ballads, although you could tell he delivered songs like “When Did You Leave Heaven” and “Overjoyed” with all the emotion he could wring out of them. He was never far from a barnburner like “Don’t You Worry About A Thing” or “Sir Duke,” though, so it all worked out in the end.
