This year, the celebration literally took a wonderful turn when the legend himself showed up to the September 5th event in Echo Park wearing his signature sunglasses and seashell braids to join the party from a roped-off VIP area in the corner of the room.
The 22-time Grammy winner surprised the crowd by gracing the stage to sing a few bars, but mostly to speak his mind about some things that are near and dear to his heart. One of the things he spoke on was his appreciation for all that Steve Jobs has done to make Apple’s technological advances accessible to the blind.
“I want you all to give a hand to someone, as you know, whose health is very bad at this time; someone whose company took the challenge in making his technology accessible to everyone in the spirit of caring and moving the world forward.”
Rousing applause from the crowd for Jobs, Stevie added, with his characteristic sense of humor, “There’s nothing on the iPhone and the iPad that you can do that I cant do. As a matter of fact, I can be talking to you and you can be looking at me and I can be doing whatever I need to do and you don’t even know what I’m doing . Yeeeah.”
Stevie also spoke about the King Holiday, the need for jobs in America and his hope that everyone would commit to loving others.
“Whatever faith or religion you have, or whatever you don’t have, I hope you will get something to believe in,” he said. “And if you have nothing to believe in, believe in love.”
SouthernCaliforniaPublicRadio.org features a great article about the event, and includes a video of Stevie Wonder’s address to the crowd.
