If you know anything about old school music, classic soul, the African-American experience, you know about Stevie Wonder. He is a genius of a man, a musical God walking and breathing among us. His music spans 5 decades and counting and covers the range of human emotion and creativity. If aliens were trying to learn about planet Earth and humanity, a Stevie Wonder song would be the most appropriate soundtrack to any narrative.
I am not a concert goer but when asked the question: who would you want to go see in concert? I bypassed the standard guy answer of Beyonce, or Janet, or the under 30 answer: Jay Z or Mary J. All of these artist I am told have fantastic stage shows and are worth every penny. But I was thinking about my favorite musician alive, Stevie Wonder.
So when my wife called me 2 months ago asking if I wanted to go to a Setvie Wonder concert I never questioned the price, I said we have to be there. The anticipation built to a creshendo until one night a week before the concert Kafi exclaimed "Oh no! I scheduled my Spanish class the same night as the concert!" Damn. There was a full hour of silent denial. She can move the class to an earlier time that day, we can arrive late, we can change the tickets to another day... but none of those options would work.
I woke up the next day resolved that this class was more important. My wife is the best Spanish teacher in Oakland. She can teach 120 McClymonds students spanish and have them actually speaking spanish in the community with gold teeth and everything, to the shock of native speakers. So when Kafi launched her website and business of http://www.learntospeakspanish.org/ and printed 1000 flyers and sent me out to flyer cars in parking lots and hand out flyers to people on the street, I realized this that this class that had 12 families scheduled to learn from the Master Teacher, my baby, that this was a huge step in the development of her business, our business.
There was no question. I had to make the biggest sacrafice of my over 30 life willingly, eagerly and without any reservation. Support my wife. After all, it was her idea to hake ME happy and buy the tickets. She had tried a year earlier but the tickets sold out in hours and were reselling for $500.
We sold the tickets on craigslist at cost (to a brotha who was going to suprise his girlfriend, our service to humanity and a positive greasing of our karmic wheel). In the end we made hundreds of dollars in one hour of teaching instead of spending hundreds of dollars on a concert. This resonated in every fiber of my being as the right thing. It was our destiny. Not just as a contribution to our household, but to our dream of having our own businesses doing what we love and getting adequately compensated for it.
It was only the next day when I saw several facebook friends proclaiming how their hearts and minds were still riveted by Stevies spirit and performance. In a flash, I was jealous of the people I consider my friends and felt that they were rubbing it in. Why would they flaunt and gloat like that? Don't they know I had tickets to that concert too! They are not special, I am!
When I regained my senses, I was happy for them. Of course they enjoyed themselves.
I still felt solid and sure that fate brought this circumstance to me and Kafi to make the difficult choice and to make it with all certainty. I realized that my support and devotion to my wonderful partner is exactly what Stevie sings about. The love and support we constantly provide each other is exactly what Stevie is urging and rejoicing in humanity itself. Stevie Wonder would have personally urged us to stay home and do that workshop knowing that his music is still a motivating factor in our lives.
Then I remembered a good friend of mine, who has a beautiful voice, had an opportunity to record with Stevie Wonder or go to Princeton 30 years ago. She couldn't do both, she could only do one or the other. Stevie Wonder told my friend to go to school. (true story) My friend went on to start a charter school in west Oakland and touch many lives in such a profound way, in a Stevie Wonder way.
Then I remembered when my father took me to a Stevie Wonder concert for my 8th birthday. It was at the Oakland coliseum in 1981. It was when he first made the song "Happy Birthday" for Martin Luther King Jr. I get the chills remembering that concert, that song. My step mom told me before I went to the concert: "Ask him to sing happy birthday. He'll sing it just for you." I felt like the most special boy in the world.
That night John Lennon was shot and killed. Stevie got the news while on stage. He announced the news and stopped the concert. He left the stage and we waited for 15 minutes or so in shock. He came back and told us that he thought about cancelling the rest of the show because Lennon was a very good close friend of his and he was visibly shaken up but that John would not have wanted him to end the show. And so he continued to play his humanity, his heart out. Stevie Wonder is more than an inspiration, he is an integral part of my life and my wonderful partnership.
When Kafi and I got married, we had selected a song to be a first song. The day of our wedding, that song was not available, a last minute casuality of a detail in an otherwise perfect event. By default, we decided together that the first song we would dance to as husband and wife would be "Ribbon In The Sky" by Stevie Wonder and it was the perfect song and theme for our ceremony, our wedding, and our life.
