This is not your everyday pool party.
The schedule starts with a question-and-answer conference with New York-based DJs Spinna and Bobbito. Then, it’s six hours of nonstop music, all of it from Stevie Wonder.
DJ Spinna (Vincent Williams) put together the first accolade a show honoring Wonder’s 1976 album, “Songs in the Key of Life” — on New York City’s Lower East Side in 1999.
“It was the biggest contribution the venue had ever seen,” event co-creator and producer Keita P. Williams recalls.
Its accomplishment spawned the larger tribute, “WONDER-Full,” which mines Wonder’s entire index. This show has be concerned with the past decade traveling the world. It’s played New York and Los Angeles and made stops in Japan, England and Holland.
“He’s major in Japan,” Williams says, laughing. “They speak the language of music, and the lyrics they were singing along.”
Six hours may sound like a long time to hear music from any one artist, but Williams affirm that the subsituting sets from Spinna and Bobbito (born Robert Garcia) are anything but insistent.
“It’s all Stevie Wonder excellent albums, excellent cuts, covers, remixes,” she explains. “You’re being educated about Stevie’s index of music that he’s recorded with other artists, samples, a lot of hip-hop samples. You have to have a great ear to know that it’s Stevie’s music.”
Of course, there’s one man who would likely accredit every track Stevie Wonder. Last year the 59 year old singer songwriter actually showed up at a “WONDER-Full” accident and performed for the devoted crowd and equally surprised DJs.
“It was mayhem,” Williams says. “The oceans parted the seas of people from the back as he was walking in. The DJs were all the way up on stage not knowing what was happening until he got closer. They droped their minds.”
Keeping Wonder fresh in people’s minds is eventually what the aggregate production is about; that and paying applause to an artist who helped shaped R&B and soul into what they are today.
“If your name is not in the lights, no one knows you,” Williams laments. It’s important “to accolade all great artists not only when they’re gone, but when they’re here, too.”
