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Artist News Awards
Stevie Wonder gets Library Of Congress award
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 26 February 2009
Talking of Barack Obama, which we were, briefly, in the context of him being considered a hero by the readers of NME, the new US president presented Stevie Wonder with the US Library of Congress’s Gershwin Prize For Popular Song yesterday.
Obama said of Wonder: “Stevie has always drawn on the incredible range of traditions in his music and from that he’s created a style that’s at once uniquely American, uniquely his own and yet somehow universal. Indeed, this could be called the American tradition – artists demonstrating the courage, the talent to find new harmonies in the rich and dissonant sounds of the American experience”.
He added: “I think it’s fair to say that had I not been a Stevie Wonder fan, Michelle might not have dated me, we might not have married. The fact that we agreed on Stevie was part of the essence of our courtship”.
Receiving his award, Wonder responded: “What is truly exciting for me today is that we truly have lived to see a time and a space where America has a chance to again live up to the greatness that it deserves to be seen and known as, through the love and caring and the commitment of a president – as in our president, Barack Obama”.
