Higher Ground 6/21/2020

Let’s dispense with any sense of dispassionate distance… Stevie Wonder is my very favorite musician. He’s my answer to all kinds of desert-island, house-burning-and-you-can-only-save-the-records-of-one-artist questions.

I’m not trying to make a persuasive once-and-for-all case. It’s not as if there is just one “musician” ladder standing outside in an empty field that all of us are trying to climb. It’s not as if any of these G.O.A.T. debates that percolate steadily through talk shows, magazines, fan forums and social media, are really intended for any kind of resolution. I don’t even have enough interest in my own thoughts to spend time comparing his merits with those of other beloved musicians. I love him and that’s that.

When discussing Stevie’s genius, his gifts as a songwriter are usually and justifiably foregrounded. If you’re not familiar, please pause here and listen to the albums (so difficult to name just a few!) “Where I’m Coming From,” “Talking Book,” “Fulfillingness’ First Finale” “Innervisions” and “Songs in the Key of Life” in their entirety. It might take a minute, and if you forget to come back here it’s not that big of a deal. If I only had these songs, I think it would be enough. The wise psalmody of “If it’s Magic,” The passionate protest of “Living for the City,” the spiritually soaked romance of “Ribbon in the Sky” and on and on… I am so thankful to have had these and many others woven through the soundtracks of my memories.

However, I’d like to shine a light here on his equally brilliant singing and interpretive powers, by sharing two examples of Stevie performing cover versions of other people’s songs. With just the fresh delivery of a familiar melody, his personality is as evident and luminous as in any of his original work. I’d also offer some reflections on the historical moment we find ourselves in this June of 2020.

Here is the original[1] (or rather first popular) version of “We’ve Only Just Begun” by Roger Nichols and Paul Williams, performed by the Carpenters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__VQX2Xn7tI

I love this. I must have heard it intermittently throughout childhood, but it was brought back to mind (albeit in a humorous, mocking way) by the Ben Stiller-Owen Wilson “Starsky and Hutch” film reboot. I was only too happy to discover that it had been the #1 song in the nation when my parents were married, an excuse to play an instrumental version of it for them at their 40th anniversary party. Like Stevie, Karen Carpenter could sing the phone book and have my unending attention, and the blend that she and brother Richard get on the background chords (through overdubbing themselves many times over) is amazing. They don’t make videos like this one anymore though!

Here’s Stevie Wonder covering this song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2olIdz0ZNc

Some obvious differences; the transformed groove expectantly sets the table…how about those basslines?!? Unlike Karen Carpenter, Stevie is sharing the melody conversationally with a female vocalist.[2] With only half the lines, he manages to speak volumes, and it is individual phrases that work a self-contained power. His delivery (for example, of “Before the rising sun, we fly….” or “and when the evening comes, we smile”) is so alive that it feels unnatural to listen to it alone.

Here’s another: Sting’s “Fragile” from his 1987 album “Nothing Like the Sun”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB6a-iD6ZOY

Like “We’ve Only” this is a wonderful piece of writing, a song I had long been aware of and appreciated. Whatever Sting’s original inspiration for the narrative (in one interview he mentions the 1987 death of American engineer Ben Linder at the hands of U.S.-backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua) the message sadly rings true throughout decades of tragic and incomprehensible violence and death, and for me as perhaps for you it evokes memories of one particular episode of personal and familial tragic loss.

“Perhaps this final act was meant, to clinch a lifetime’s argument,

But nothing comes from violence, and nothing ever could…”

And now Stevie’s version, from Sting’s 60th birthday concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York in October of 2011.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnZgNYoZkeU

This is special. If you weren’t prone to feel it yourself, just seeing the way Sting and the other musicians gathered[3] regard Stevie would usher you into the affair. The love is palpable and reciprocated. Stevie: “I love this song.” He hardly had to say it.

As he sings the first couple of lines the word that jumps to mind for me is personality.

Perhaps you’ve seen the growing number of “reaction” videos on Youtube; folks filming themselves watching (ostensibly for the first time) a performance and commenting as they go along.[4]

Here’s one done by musician, youth leader and social justice advocate Bervin Harris.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txzm6dB9ABE

Harris’s verbal reactions speak for mine…just “Stevie.” “That’s Stevie…”

He (Stevie) is so powerfully, so ever himself, and the familiarity and “Sting-ness” of “Fragile” only serve to highlight this molecular truth. Whatever his “sound” is, it’s something that seems to be available to him in any context at all times. I’m trying very hard in this blog series to react to musical performances that move me in a very atomic way, identifying specific images, thoughts or feelings brought on by particular musical moments. This is very difficult with these performances. What is inspirational and entrancing about Stevie singing these songs is present in each note or phrase, but not more than in any other moment. The energy that still makes me throw up my hands and/or curse softly after most likely 100+ views of the Fragile video is present and burning from start to finish.

These are great performances, and Stevie Wonder is as great as a musician as there is, with an absolutely personal, instantly recognizable sound. (I have about as much interest in dissecting the minutiae of his technique and stylistic tendencies as I do if figuring out just exactly why my mother says she loves me.) This idea of distinctive and recognizable personality as the prime hallmark of excellence, of achievement, of genius is a fairly dependable trope; it feels weighty and hard to argue.

Is that all there is to say though? Is there anything that we might miss in our culturally conditioned haste to anoint “great individuals” (usually men!) in our descriptions of musical history? In the academic world so many of the stories that we tell ourselves are the tales of great individuals and their great moments of great achievement, which drag the art form “forward” to a new plateau until the next great individual arrives to expand upon, or react against it. As a default setting for a great deal of musical criticism, I believe that this stance risks a very unhelpful tunnel vision. There’s more going on here than just these performances, or even just this musician. What about culture, community, tradition?

I once heard Branford Marsalis (one of my personal heroes with whom I’m grateful to be acquainted) describe the difference between the playing of two different musicians (and therefore his preference for one over the other) as that of “Blackness.” Although I would never have dared to use that terminology myself, (and feel hesitant even about typing it here, lest anyone think that I consider myself in any way a credible arbiter of “Blackness”) in this case I knew exactly what he meant. (It’s worth noting that both of the musicians in question played the same instrument, and both were African American. Branford was referencing something aesthetic and cultural;  something that issued from experience and affection, not biology.)

We all know, or at least have an inkling, that at this point nearly all the music we think of as “American” bears some mixture of the cultural and aesthetic DNA of two contrasting ancient cultures, hailing from the Atlantic facing western halves of Africa and Europe. (We must not forget that this was no happy accidental meet-cute of world cultures but rather the problem-solving, making-the-best-of a lurid, violently abusive forced marriage.)[5] These varying practices and values, expressed in melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre can at times be felt, albeit inexactly, in a continuum between African/European, Black/White. While there are cultural scripts encouraging us to be deliberately ignorant of these differences, in a forced “ear-colorblindness,” I’m betting that the racialized interpretations of the music that we hear bring more to bear on our reactions than is often spoken of.

When I hear Stevie sing interpret these two songs, I am hearing source material (Carpenters, Sting) that I perceive or encode as “white” (due to white songwriters, performers, largely white audiences, but also musical and performative characteristics..) being expertly, lovingly, boldly imbued with “Blackness.” I’m just speaking for myself, and trying to not judge these observations or claim for them any inherent truth, (and certainly not an ideal one!) but perhaps you can relate. The racially tinged assumptions about the Carpenters, Sting, and Stevie Wonder that I bring with me into these listening experiences are an unavoidable part of my reaction. Judging from internet culture, performances that have an aspect of racialized musical worlds colliding are interesting to many of us. Thoroughly woven through our racist societal discourse, and eagerly co-signed by the forces of the marketplace, are the ideas that certain music is for certain people, and that someone who looks like X should appreciate (as a listener) or sound like ( as a performer) Y, not Z. There is definitely a sense of happy surprise when these assumptions are frustrated or subverted. For example, one mainstay of “reaction videos” mentioned earlier is a sense of “racial reveal.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pzYVgYa7EA

But I want to be careful. What exactly am I, as a white person, feeling or receiving from such moments? What is the story that my heart tells itself? Is it just the thrill of possibility, of repressive boundaries and labels being sloughed off? Or is it the relief at some kind of wishfully imagined absolution of the racial prejudice in my own heart and mind; a seductive and premature sense of resolution and happily-ever-after where the dissonance of racial inequality and white privilege is neatly and cleanly resolved? [6]

It is a poignant irony that while no non-Black person can ever fully identify and truly know the feeling and experience of anti-Black racism, (or in my opinion can ever truly be finally and completely “woke” in this regard) the gifts of Black culture are graciously open, generous, and inviting to all. One of the defining thematic stories of my own life is that of being repeatedly welcomed into, affirmed and even celebrated as a white participant in the cultural and social spaces created by, for and around Black music and people.

If you are a fellow non-Black person and have been touched by Black art, (and it’s hard to imagine that you haven’t!) I’d bet that there, in story, spirit and song, you have received and appreciated:

A sense of expansion and infinity that grows from deep, practiced familiarity.

Thorough acknowledgement of and reckoning with all things true, especially one’s own heart, mind and history.

An attitude (or stance) of restorative humor and criticism.

Great love and great suffering, welling up into palpable knowledge of the divine.

Yes, I do think that all of this can live in one note, one phrase, no less than in a library of speeches. No, I wouldn’t think for a moment that these feelings represent more than a small slice of what constitutes Blackness in its lived reality or unlimited potential.

We as a nation and world are in the midst of what could be an important, transformative moment in history. What will we (still speaking to fellow non-black folks here) do with the truth that we cannot unknow, the sights and sounds that we cannot un-see or un-hear? What is the message, the marching orders of this music, or any music that stirs itself into our deepest pockets of courage and fear?

But first hold that thought, because the music is really beside the point.

If the whole of Black music were insipid, boring, and superficial, Black lives wouldn’t matter one bit less, Black humanity wouldn’t be any less valuable or sacred. How urgent and incontrovertible is the demand of human conscience to honor, celebrate, protect, learn from, and in all ways work for the prosperity and well-being of our black sisters and brothers, and to repent of, reject and rebel against the evil of white supremacy in all its myriad forms and expressions. Now.

How much harder still to ignore this call for those of us touched, nurtured and inspired by Black music, Black art, Black thought, Black spirituality. The apostle Paul uses the phrase “make my joy complete” to describe a basic kind of integrity; the idea that to the degree that someone has been loved, blessed and provided for, it is only natural that they reciprocally enter into those same generative processes themselves. What if the fearsomely good spirits that the best art and culture awaken within are not an end unto themselves but just the rock-churned spray kicking out of turbulent river? You can easily enough cool your toes but you need to be submerged in order to be carried away.

Thank you, Stevie, for your music which tells the truth and beckons us all into fuller humanity. May I, may we, not be found to have fallen in love with music that is bold, daring and powerful, only to remain living fearful, insular lives which betray us as never really having really listened in the first place.

[1] Actually the song was penned for this 1970 bank commercial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97X9huy7pHQ

[2]I’m really unhappy and unsatisfied, and more than a little embarrassed to be publishing this despite not being able to locate any details about this concert/recording. Can anyone help???

[3]Shout out to the great Christian McBride on bass, and my old friend Jo Lawry singing backup!

[4] I could see how one might consider this entire blog series to be pretty much the same thing in more pedantic form! If that’s the kind of thing that floats your boat some previous entries are just a click away!

[5] On a broader- than -national level, (largely due to the worldwide saturation of 20th century American pop culture) it’s not going too far to say that the music of the African diaspora, most vibrantly worked out in the US, Cuba and Brazil, is the dominant musical language of global humanity in our lifetimes.

[6] I also want to guard against the insidious temptation of any sort of appropriative “culture-vulture” mental gymnastics by which I could love and appreciate Black art, or any kind of “Blackness” as somehow separate from the complete human experiences of Black people, or the truths of Black history.