Stevie Wonder’s “Ode To Joy”

I live for these moments, the times when an unsuspecting curiosity suddenly ignites a multi-day obsession. Words will leap off a page and suddenly I find myself consumed with chasing down threads of ideas. The page that I’m referring to there is actually not book at all, but an audible version of one, so forgive me for stretching the analogy. And to further confuse that point, the audible book in question wasn’t even an audible book, but rather a recorded podcast presented as a book of sorts, by Wesley Morris, a Pulitzer Prize winning film critic who produced it. But it was presented as a book, so I’ll stick with that.

The book focused on Stevie Wonder, in particular a series of five consecutive albums that he released between 1972, to 1976, which Morris and other critics consider one of the most impressive runs by a songwriter ever produced. It is referred to as his “classic period” and includes “Music of My Mind”, “Talking Book”, “Innervisions”, “Fulfillingness’ First Finale”, and “Songs in the Key of Life.”

Of course, I knew the podcast would cover his life in some general way, his blindness, his precocious talent as a child, and so on, but what resonated with me came from learning about his voice against the social injustices of his day, certainly against Black Americans. There were a few songs I was familiar with where he sang from that pull-pit, such as “Living For the City”, and “Higher Ground”, but I quickly learned the man had one of the clearest and most consistent musical voices that Black America had at the time. And most importantly, he didn’t use that voice to divide, but to unit. He was no Malcom X shouting aggression, but rather urged people to recognize our shared brotherhood. In much the way that Brice Springsteen took up the banner of the working class in Rock and Roll, Stevie’s R&B also sang out for struggling families and political injustices.

For example, consider these words from “You Haven’t Done Nothing”, aimed at America’s “White” political power structure.

We are amazed but not amused
By all the things you say that you’ll do
Though, much concerned but not involved
With decisions that are made by you

But we are sick and tired of hearing your song
Tellin’ how you are gonna change right from wrong
‘Cause if you really want to hear our views
You haven’t done nothin’

Potent, frustrated words, to be sure, but I’ve quickly learned those flashes of injustice, and even anger on occasion, were secondary emotions for him. The overriding focus of his lyrics/life, his ‘North-Star’, as it were, was LOVE. His song catalog is filled to the brim with the ideal of love, and all the ways it manifests itself in our lives…..and that is the bullseye for my intentions here. Not simply his capacity for it, but in the scope and potential he viewed it. And not simply at a personal level, but as a binding force that can mode and shape families and communities, if not entire societies.

But before getting on with my intent here, we should be reminded just how young the man was at the start of this five-album run. It begins with “Music Of My Mind”, his fourteenth album, incredibly, when he was just 22 years old, and culminated with what critics consider his master piece, the double album “Songs In the Key of Life”, at 26. We’re talking about an incredibly mature young man, penning words like a sage; at once spilling the poetry of love like a Romeo, while also voicing outrage like a street activist, shaming politicians to up their game and keep their promises. All along the way, the optimism of love, together with the frustrations of injustice remained conflicting sides of the same coin, album after album.

Now with that brief introduction to lay the groundwork, let me turn to my intent, and that would be a single song among the 54 that comprise those five albums. The song I have in mind, “As”, and comes near the very end of side four from “Key’s In the Key of Life”, the last in this strings of “classic” albums, and is the emotional center piece to the entire double album. With this song, Stevie appears intent to frame for the world what is truly in his heart.

The sheer weight of the song artfully conceals itself behind a standard, mid-temp, love song, albeit one with a beautifully engaging melody. It only exposes its true power once it bends towards the home stretch, when the intensity cranks up, both musically and lyrically. That’s when we hear Stevie’s impassioned vocals urgently driving home his message, along with a small gospel choir backing him up. This is revival music…..full-on, and the effect gives me chills every time I hear it.

But it’s the lyrics that are driving this train and to my ear, they sound something close to a sermon, not preachy, but welcoming, and suggests that his intent is to preach a gospel of love. He is asking his listeners to step back and consider how we can change the world by loving each other.

The Subplot

Of course, the subplot riding beneath his lyrics have to be accounted for as well, because we need to put ourselves in his shoes as much as possible. Not only was he born completely blind (1950), but was also born on the wrong side of a deeply divided country, as Jim Crow laws and Segregation were still in place as a young teenager. Therefore, once he became a known star in the mid-60’s, he had a ringside seat at the dichotomy of being a successful “black” musician in a white consumer landscape. Berry Gordy helped bridge the gap by starting his “Motown” music label, signing and developing Black artists such as Diana Ross and the Supremes, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Marvelettes, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five, as well as Stevie, who he signed as an 11-year-old prodigy.

But Gordy knew Marketing, and clearly understood that his artists needed to be carefully “packaged” in order to be accepted by the white music purchasing public. For instance, his artists needed to always appear well groomed and in their “Sunday best”, and were not allowed to make controversial statements, either in song or in the press regarding the on-going Vietnam War, or racial issues whatever. They needed to be squeaky clean, in other words.

Marvin Gaye became one of the first Motown artists to break away from Gordy’s restrictions by recording the landmark album “What’s Going On” (1971), which confronted America’s controversies eye-to-eye. Gordy initially refused to release the album, causing Gaye to lay down the ultimate threat by refusing to produce any additional music until the album was released. That scenario would not have flown under Wonder’s radar and very likely inspired his own “social” voice to rise to the surface. Take this example from “Living For The City.”

His father works some days for fourteen hours
And you can bet, he barely makes a dollar
His mother goes to scrub the floors for many
And you’d best believe, she hardly gets a penny
Living just enough, just enough for the city

Her brother’s smart, he’s got more sense than many
His patience’s long, but soon he won’t have any
To find a job is like a haystack needle
‘Cause where he lives they don’t use colored people
Living just enough, just enough for the city, yeah

Or consider this verse from “Higher Ground.”

Powers keep on lyin’, yeah
While your people keep on dyin’
World keep on turnin’
‘Cause it won’t be too long
Oh, no

Or this from “Village Ghetto Land.”

Broken glass is everywhere
It’s a bloody scene
Killing plagues the citizens
Unless they own police

Families buying dog food now
Starvation roams the streets
Babies die before they’re born
Infected by the grief

Now some folks say that we should be
Glad for what we have
Tell me would you be happy in Village Ghetto Land

Clearly Stevie had a deep undercurrent of frustration eating away at his peace of mind. Jim Crow had been laid to rest, along with the passage of Civil Rights legislation (1965), but there remained sharply divided lines. At street level, white America was affluent and held the power, black America was poor and powerless, and he clearly struggled with that.

So, with the country exhausted from years of a polarizing War, and student protests that often pitted households against each another, as well as navigating a de-segregated culture that played out daily in communities across the country, Wonder sat down to voice his response to all the hurt and disfunction he saw around him by penning this incredible song, a song that many consider to be his Magnum Opus, his greatest achievement as a lyrical songwriter, or at the very least could stand as a type of “epitaph”, distilling into words what he wanted his lasting message to be.

______

“As”

As around the sun the earth knows she’s revolving
And the rosebuds know to bloom in early may
Just as hate knows love’s the cure
You can rest your mind assure
That I’ll be loving you always

As now can’t reveal the mystery of tomorrow
But in passing will grow older every day
Just as all that’s born is new
You know what I say is true
That I’ll be loving you always

I love how he sprinkles his intentions with phrases that broaden the version of love he has in mind (underlined).

Did you know that true love asks for nothing
Her acceptance is the way we pay
Did you know that life has given love a guarantee
To last through forever and another day

Just as time knew to move on since the beginning
And the seasons know exactly when to change
Just as kindness knows no shame
Know through all your joy and pain
That I’ll be loving you always

As today I know I’m living
But tomorrow could make me the past
but that I mustn’t fear
For I’ll know deep in my mind
The love of me I’ve left behind
‘Cause I’ll be loving you always

That last verse looms large here, for it offers a hint into his ultimate theme…. that we live, and we will die, but we must not allow ourselves to retreat from life in fear, because the love we live with spreads beyond us.

The finale kicks in with Stevie cranking up the urgency with a powerful display of vocal focus, delivering the ultimate challenge we all face, which is how to respond to the world that often hurts? Will we return hate with hate? Will we exchange sarcasm for sarcasm, insult for insult? Or will we rise above it and show compassion and decency?

We all know sometimes life hates and troubles
Can make you wish you were born in another time and space
But you can bet your lifetimes that and twice it’s double
That god knew exactly where he wanted you to be placed
So make sure when you say you’re in it, but not of it
You’re not helpin’ to make this earth
A place sometimes called hell
Change your words into truths
And then change that truth into love
And maybe our children’s grandchildren
And their great grandchildren will tell
I’ll be loving you

There is some real power in that verse, especially the line, “So make sure when you say you’re in it, but not of it”, meaning that our character should be timeless, then follows that up with, “change your words into truth, and that truth into love”, so those we have loved will know that truth and spread it to those they love. It’s incredibly moving, and with a backing gospel choir at his back, the passage takes on the character of a sermon, with Stevie standing at the podium, preaching his message of love and togetherness, passionately encouraging us to do our part to ensure that it lasts beyond us.

And all of this landed on me due from an “unsuspecting curiosity.” Damn!

Before continuing, take a moment to fully digest this wonderful video (below), and pay particular attention to the final third where the words and images unite into a single, memorizing voice.

_____

Beethoven in the Shadows

Now for the “unsuspecting curiosity” that I mentioned at the outset. Please stay with me here, because this is a small glimpse inside how my mind works. As I mentioned, it all began while listening to Morris’ podcast and discovering this wonderful song. I had never heard the song before, in all honesty, yet as I listened, Morris brought several people into the conversation describing their own emotional attachment to the song, including a deeply thoughtful Michelle Obama, a theme began to emerge that I simply HAD to know more about. Together, each of them peeled back layers of the song, exposing its underbelly, which is LOVE, all caps, larger than life, and able to silence all the hate.

I was fortunately enough to stumble across the YouTube video above, created by a fan who provided an exquisite visual montage that beautifully captures its theme, and the more I listened, the more it felt as if my mind had been given a deep breath of fresh air. A new landscape opened up and with it a single name rushed in, instinctively, “Beethoven.” It struck me that Stevie’s defiance in the face of conflict, frustration, and strife reminded me of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, particularly it’s finale, “Ode to Joy”, whose words came from a poem written by the German poet, Fredrick Schiller, and is sung by a full chorus as the exclamation point Beethoven intended, the emotional climax to the entire piece. But why that connection?

Simply put, they share the same theme. The music certainly comes from different centuries and have nothing in common except for their exuberant endings, but both share the theme of how they each responded to an unfair world, whether that be misfortune, failure, betrayal, or anything that may have us on our knees. It’s the same conversation that goes way back in our past. In fact, I have a book on my shelf by the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius who echoed this very theme nearly two thousand years ago.

Of course, I realize that linking Beethoven’s Ode To Joy to Stevie Wonder’s “As”, may seem to be a stretch, but there are emotional parallels. Beethoven went deaf, which for a composer of music was clearly not a welcome turn of events. He struggled for several years attempting to compensate, but it was out of his hands. In fact, his despair can be seen in a letter he wrote to his brother, and after confiding to him of his thoughts of suicide, he rebounded with this, “I will seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not crush me completely.”

With that, he went to work writing his 9^th symphony, which became his last. At that point it’s estimated that he was 90 to 95% deaf. He could distinguish abrupt sounds, and some low frequency tones, but the rest would have reached his ears as silence. Yet……and yet he composed this intricate symphony of nearly an hour and a half in length, consisting of dozens of instrumental layers, all woven together in an exquisite tapestry of music……all from the memory of those notes. I find that absolutely astonishing, the Eighth Wonder of the World level of astonishing. Interestingly enough, after its debut performance, at its conclusion, a singer standing nearby went to Beethoven and spun him around to face the applause that he could not hear.

So yes, Beethoven’s defiance to his fate is echoed, in my opinion, to Wonder’s own defiance. Both said “Yes” to life, yes to the challenge, challenges that we will all face at some point.

Beethoven Symphony No. 9 — Ode to Joy (Excerpt)

Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee,
God of glory, Lord of love;
Hearts unfold like flow’rs before Thee,
Op’ning to the sun above.

Melt the clouds of sin and sadness;
Drive the dark of doubt away;
Giver of immortal gladness,
Fill us with the light of day!

All Thy works with joy surround Thee,
Earth and heav’n reflect Thy rays,
Stars and angels sing around Thee,
Center of unbroken praise.

Field and forest, vale and mountain,
Flow’ry meadow, flashing sea,
Singing bird and flowing fountain
Call us to rejoice in Thee.
Thou art giving and forgiving,
Ever blessing, ever blest,
Wellspring of the joy of living,
Ocean depth of happy rest!

Thou our Father, Christ our Brother,
All who live in love are Thine;
Teach us how to love each other,
Lift us to the joy divine.

Mortals, join the happy chorus,
Which the morning stars began;
Father love is reigning o’er us,
Brother love binds man to man.

Ever singing, march we onward,
Victors in the midst of strife,
Joyful music leads us Sunward
In the triumph song of life.