ANALYSIS/OPINION
Stevie Wonder took the opening moments of his concert at Washington, D.C.’s Verizon Center Saturday evening to call attention to the ongoing epidemic of gun violence in America, as exemplified by the mass shooting at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College in the town of Roseburg last week.
Mr. Wonder, 65, spoke for 10 minutes at the top of the show after being led to the front of the stage.
“All lives matter,” Mr. Wonder said, parroting the online campaign, “but black lives matter since [mankind’s ancestors] originated there,” he said, to a bevy of applause.
Above all, Mr. Wonder said, was the need to meet violence not with more superior force, but with love.
He then took his seat at the piano and began playing “Love’s in Need of Love Today.” It was a stirring, emotion-filled beginning to an evening that featured Mr. Wonder’s recognizable classics, some surprises and even some unnecessary extra length to the evening.
The “Songs in the Key of Life Performance” show, broken up into two sections with a 20-minute intermission, was a lengthy affair for the Saturday District crowd, who by turns were fully engaged and even occasionally dispassionately moved.
The first set contained many of Mr. Wonder’s most recognizable, crowd-pleasing favorites, including “Sir Duke” and “I Wish,” both of which excited Verizon’s audience to stand and groove along with the Michigan singer and his backing coterie of over two dozen musicians. As he is wont to do, Mr. Wonder entreaties the audience in call-and-reply vocal exercises, and he gave ample minutes of the first half to highlighting the individual prodigious talents of his many supporting musicians and singers.
Mr. Wonder took an intriguing detour with “Pastime Paradise,” applying the melody and beat of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” but with words calling for awareness of the work for brotherhood that yet needs to be done:
“Proclamation of race relations, consolation, integration, verification of revelations, acclamation, world salvation, vibrations, simulation, confirmation … to the peace of the world.”
After playing for nearly two hours, Mr. Wonder and his supporting players took a “15-minute intermission” that was closer to a half-hour.
Then a strange thing happened when Mr. Wonder returned for the second half of the show: While the musicianship, the vitality and the virtuosity of the playing was all the same, somehow he had largely lost the crowd’s enthusiasm. For such a lengthy performance — including the intermission, clocking in at close to four hours — the break in the show seemed a mistake from a purely showbiz perspective.
With bladders emptied, beers refreshed and energy reserves hopefully replenished for more, the early part of the second half had the uncomfortable feeling of palpable distance between artist and patron. Gone from the first half was the standing energy and clamoring for the hills. For at least the first half-hour of the second half, concertgoers largely sat on their hands — or rather, picked up their smartphones, which, formerly trained on the musical great to capture him in picture and video form, were now employed to update Facebook statuses (and likely post media captures of the first half).
Little matter, however, as Mr. Wonder brought out big guns “Superstition” and “Higher Ground” in the closing moments, leaving the stage with the gathered clearly changed by the evening’s experience.
Vocally and as a performer, Mr. Wonder was in tip-top form, his voice seemingly inexhaustible and never straining at all for the highest notes of his considerable register. Above all was the optimism, the interaction with the crowd, and his ever-present cheering on for the continued need for brotherhood — in America and around the world.
• Eric Althoff can be reached at twt@washingtontimes.com.
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