At first I was puzzled why not with us, with whom he spends six hours a day? Children seemed to like our birthday celebrations. I remembered earlier in the year that William’s mom told me her son didn’t want to celebrate his birthday at school - only in after-school. That interaction at breakfast stayed with me for days. Later, he told me he wanted to sing this song to me for my birthday. “Thank you for telling me!” William finished eating breakfast. When I was growing up, that was the birthday song my white, English-speaking family sang it was what I knew. It sounded joyous - more joyous than the staid birthday song I had led children in singing every time we celebrated a student’s birthday: “Happy Birthday to You,” written by sisters Patty and Mildred Hill in the early 1900s.
Of course, this isn’t a generic birthday song, it’s a happy birthday song for Martin Luther King Jr., arguing that his birthday should be a national holiday.
Later, I learned it was “Happy Birthday” by Stevie Wonder. The song was familiar, but I couldn’t remember who wrote it. “ Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthdaaaaaay - happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthdaaaaaay!” they sang, smiling and clapping to the beat. A student named William remembered this information and turning away from his bagel with cream cheese, he said, “Kerry, we sing a different birthday song in our after-school.” He began singing it and two of his after-school classmates, Derrick and Fatima, joined in. We often talk about birthdays in class, and in one of our discussions I shared that my birthday was coming up - a way to help us bond over a shared experience (“I have a birthday, too!”). and the kids were eating cereal and bagels before we went upstairs to the classroom. I work with a paraprofessional named Vesna, who was also at the table. I teach kindergarten and 1st grade - looping, with the same class for two years - at Central Park East 2, a public school in East Harlem, New York. (And in writing, performing, and producing much of the material all on his own, he established the model of artist-as-auteur embraced by funk pioneers like Prince and rap icons like Kanye West.) But even in this fruitfully experimental phase, Stevie was still producing eternal wedding slow-dance standards like “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” and “Isn’t She Lovely,” and as the ’80s beckoned, he effortlessly adapted to the times with the synth-slicked soul of “Part-Time Lover” and the irresistible adult-contemporary serenade “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” While his output slowed after the ’90s, he remains a ubiquitous, towering figure in pop: Whether he’s singing at Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration or blowing harmonica on Mark Ronson’s 2015 hit album, Uptown Special, a Stevie Wonder appearance carries all the grandeur and gravitas of a papal blessing.One morning last April, I was with my kindergarten students in our school’s cafeteria. With them, he showed how speaking up and getting down were not mutually exclusive ideals, fashioning a singular style of psychedelic funk where even the grittiest tracks, such as “Higher Ground,” were infused with spiritual uplift. His staggering run of classic albums-from 1972’s Talking Book to 1976’s Songs in the Key of Life-helped lend legitimacy to the LP format for black soul/R&B pop artists who, with few exceptions, were wrongly relegated to singles status. As Black Power politics seeped into the early-’70s cultural landscape, Stevie became a symbol of both the movement’s righteous indignation and its hope for a more socially just world.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SONG STEVIE WONDER HOW TO
First emerging as a child star in the early ’60s, covering Ray Charles standards under the name Little Stevie Wonder, Stevland Hardaway Judkins (born in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1950) would, by decade’s end, graduate to the more sophisticated soul of Motown-defining singles like “For Once in My Life,” showing future teen idols like Justin Timberlake and Justin Bieber how to gracefully age out of kinder-pop novelty. That he’s accomplished it without his sight is both the most astonishing and least remarkable thing about him. An impassioned vocalist, prodigious multi-instrumentalist, and visionary producer, Stevie Wonder is a truly transformative figure in the history of popular music.
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