Feeding Off The Love Of The Land by Stevie Wonder (With Strings)

OMGosh...this is such an amazing record. I believe one of God's greatest gifts to the world is Stevie Wonder. He is one of the few artists that I don't remember not knowing existed. Stevie Wonder is music, he is air.

When I was old enough to not only "hear" music, but process it for myself the musicians that defined music for me were Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, James Brown and Aretha Franklin.

In our home we had 45's from them all. As a girl of the 70's the Jackson Five most certainly ruled, however my earliest understanding that music could be frivolous, fortuitous, fortitudinous and always meaningful was Stevie Wonder. He could deftly articulate sentiments that ranged from the dance-floor funk of "Boogie On Reggae Woman" to poems about the human condition like "Big Brother".

My Stevie Wonder education and appreciation occurred in real time, as well as, in retrospect. While the album In Square Circle (1985) might have been the current album in the market place; it was radio's quiet storm DJ's who still played "Creepin" or "Where Were You When I Needed You" alongside "Overjoyed", the single from that album that shaped my understanding of Stevie's genius.

In college "guy-friends" gave me cassettes that chronicled and culminated all the records I'd grown up with and all the "best of's" to which we'd listened.  There was in particular an "Best of" 8 track my mom bought one summer from a two-lane highway gas station traveling from our home in Huntsville, AL to my grandparents' home in Coffeville, AL that sticks in my head and HEART.  This 4 program 8 track contained songs like "Big Brother",  "You Haven't Done Nothing" and the seminal "Higher Ground"; songs that even for me around the age of 8 or 9 plugged into what I understood about spirituality and living your best life.  These are songs that I was hearing for the first time in that car on that road, but they were life changing...even for a child.  From then all art I believed... I thought should actually feel transformative like those songs and so many more in his vast repertoire.

When home from school (Tuskegee), I can still remember having friend's over and hearing "If It's Magic" late one night on the radio (shout out to celestial radio dj's). I stood still because the song demanded that I did and all I kept thinking was, "I've never heard this one before" (sequentially it is found after "Another Star" on Songs in the Key of Life (what an album title)).

It's not my intention to wax on forever, but I post this song, "Feeding Off The Love of the Land" from the Jungle Fever soundtrack because it is touching, beautiful, honest and as usual for my hero Stevie Wonder...profoundly prophetic.