Stevie's African Vision
BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER, ON HIS BIRTHDAY
South Africa’s First Lady of Song, the late Miriam Makeba, recalled the occasion in detail.
“Stevie Wonder arrives, and I am asked to take care of him,” she logged in her autobiography, Makeba: My Story. “Stevie remembers me from the Copacabana show of his [in 1970] when I gave him an African statue, because I admired him. Stevie is looking like an African now, his hair all braided with beads. For the month, I am his guide. I will see that he has all he needs during his stay.”
That particular month was more than 45 years ago, when the Motown superstar was in Lagos, Nigeria, for the African Festival of Arts and Culture ’77. He had travelled to the event as a visitor, according to one newspaper report, but the demand was so great for him to perform that he finally agreed.
Stevie with Ghana’s president Akufo-Addo
It was not as if Wonder wasn’t wanted elsewhere. On February 19, 1977, he was expected at the Grammys, which were being held at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. He had earned six nominations for his Songs In The Key of Life masterpiece, and the awards shindig was to be broadcast live on national television.
Instead, Wonder was in Lagos, and according to Makeba, he didn’t want to leave to attend the Grammys on the other side of the world.
“I am in my hotel room when we come up with an idea,” reminisced the African music queen. “Suppose I find a way to get a TV hookup here in Nigeria so he can give his acceptance speech in Africa and be seen in America live?” And so it was arranged by the country’s ministry of information. Makeba added, “The setup is considered very innovative and daring.”
Unfortunately, the satellite transmission turned out to be less than perfect, the signal fuzzy and garbled. At one point, the show’s host, singer Andy Williams, was frustrated by the delays, and asked Wonder, “If you can’t hear me, can you see me?” Even so, Makeba said she was glad to help, “because he is one artist who gives of himself: not only for black causes, but causes for all people.”
Two nations to the west of Nigeria is another – Ghana – which has previously entertained Wonder, and this year has gone so far as to grant him honorary citizenship. In the country’s capital, Accra, on May 13, the musician appeared with president Nana Akufo-Addo to accept the honour. “I talked about Ghana throughout my years,” declared Wonder. “Over 50 years, I talked about being a citizen in this country. The truth is, as now a Ghanaian citizen, I am committed to being a part of fulfilling the dream that we’ve had for so many years, of bringing people of Africa, those at the diaspora, United States, Caribbean, all of the people together. Because as I have said for many years, the only way the world would come together is that we unite as united people of the world.”
Followers (and observers) of Wonder have for years heard him talk about moving to Africa. On Oprah Winfrey’s TV show in early 2021, he again mentioned it. “I want to see [America] smile again, and I want to see it before I move to Ghana.” This was, he implied, as much about racial respect in the country of his birth as anything. “Because I don’t want to see my children’s children’s children having to say, ‘Oh, please, like me, please, please respect me, please know that I’m important, please value me. What kind of shit is that?’ ”
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The citizenship ceremony, held in the Ghanaian capital on Wonder’s 74th birthday, was widely covered in African media and beyond. Some years ago, the country had set up a formal programme to aid Afro-descendants settling there, in search of their ancestral roots. The Africa Report noted that more than 1,500 African Americans have done so in Ghana since 2019.
Among those accompanying Wonder on May 13 was Akosua Busia, a Ghanaian actress, author and songwriter – best-known, probably, for her movie role in The Color Purple, and lesser-known, perhaps, for writing lyrics with Stevie for “Moon Blue,” a track on his last album, 2005’s A Time 2 Love. She also collaborated with him on a 1992 song, “One Night In Paris,” but this remains unreleased.
Motown Records, meanwhile, had a checkered history in Africa. For some time, it was licensed to EMI Records in the region; then, in early 1974, it introduced its own small operation in Nigeria, under the direction of Gerald Theus. “We will be establishing…an office to serve primarily the interests of the black African nations as related to the successful exploitation of Tamla/Motown, the Jobete repertoire, and our other entertainment business interests,” wrote Motown official Ralph Seltzer to Minden Plumley, EMI’s man in Nigeria.
Stevie’s ‘Moon Blue’ co-writer, Akosua Busia
“I consider this development to be of very great significance,” Plumley responded, “more particularly as [Motown] repertoire can be considered to be the most popular of all international products available in Africa.”
“I always got on well with Gerald,” says John Marshall, Motown’s London-based international chief during the 1970s. “He was good company, and we spent most of the time looking around London and enjoying ourselves. Then I met him in Nigeria and the Ivory Coast.” The company had high hopes for sales in the region. “The Africans are like the Brazilians,” Marshall told Music Week in 1975. “Music is an important part of their life, and after food and rent, they probably spend more money on music than anything else.” He estimated that Motown would sell between 300,000 and 500,000 albums in Africa by the end of that year, primarily in Nigeria, but also in Ghana, Kenya, Zambia and the Ivory Coast. (I had hoped to speak to Gerald Theus myself when researching Motown: The Sound of Young America, but despite an initial, positive connection, the interview failed to happen. At the time, he was working for U.S. Wheat, where he was a regional director in Africa. He had left Motown circa 1975.)
John Marshall noted that in Africa, Motown’s customary big-selling acts like Stevie Wonder and Diana Ross moved only relatively small quantities, outstripped by the likes of the Commodores, the Undisputed Truth and the Temptations. “They definitely go for the funkier type of music rather than the ‘smoother’ Tamla sound,” he told Music Week, “and they’re big on home-grown product.”
Ghana aside, Wonder’s most significant African link was his support for Nelson Mandela in the struggle against apartheid. Because of that, his music was banned by the South African regime in the 1980s, not least, “It’s Wrong (Apartheid)” on his album, In Square Circle. After Mandela became the nation’s president, Wonder sang “Happy Birthday” to him in person during his 80th birthday celebrations in Johannesburg in 1998.
The musician’s decision to move to Africa, whenever that may take place, has not been not without criticism. Ghanaian entertainment pundit MC Yaa Yeboah, for one, questioned why no projects or development plans were announced at the citizenship event last month. “So much as his coming to Ghana is good,” she said, “until we harness the opportunities that come with such things, it will not be beneficial to the country.”
Wonder himself was resolutely upbeat about the May 13 honour. “For understanding that the only way that the world can move forward is that we come together as one piece to do so. I celebrate that spirit. What is unfortunate is that too many people are too blind to see it. But I, with complete innervisions, I know that it is just a heartbeat away.”
Language notes: in the above-mentioned “It’s Wrong (Apartheid),” the background vocals are sung in Xhosa, a language indigenous to southern Africa, by various exiled music makers from the region. And in The Greatest Night In Pop, the recent film documentary about “We Are The World,” Wonder was said to have wanted some of the song performed in Swahili. The idea did not take hold, not least because the charity fundraiser was intended to benefit the people of Ethiopia, where Swahili is not spoken.
Footnotes: it appears that Gerald Theus set up an independent label, Eboni Records, in the Ivory Coast after he left Motown, and put out an album produced by Art Stewart, known for his work with Marvin Gaye and Rick James. The featured act was the Eboni Band, whose members included African musicians, augmented for the project by the likes of Fred Wesley and Ernie Fields, Jr. Recording was done in Los Angeles, and the album was released in Africa in 1980. It was reissued in 2021 by Soul Jazz Records of London.