Legendary Cuban-American jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval teams up with Prince Royce for an uplifting feel-good piece of music written by Stevie Wonder. While living in his native Cuba, Sandoval was influenced by jazz musicians Charlie Parker, Clifford Brown and Dizzy Gillespie. In 1977 he met Gillespie, who became his friend and mentor and helped him defect from Cuba while on tour with the United Nations Orchestra. Sandoval became an American naturlized citizen in 1998. Sandoval has won Grammy, Billboard and Emmy Awards and has performed at the Super Bowl and White House.
Geoffrey Royce Rojas, known professionally as Prince Royce, is an American-born Domincan singer and songwriter. Some of his collaborations include: Shakira, Chris Brown, Jennifer Lopez, Selena Gomez, Snoop Dogg, Pitbull, Thalia, Maná, Daddy Yankee, Becky G, Anitta, Ludacris, J Balvin, Bad Bunny, Farruko, and Maluma, among others. August 9, 2018 was proclaimed “Prince Royce Day” in New York by Mayor Bill de Blasio, in recognition of his contributions to society and for being a role model to youth in his home town. He has been induced into the Bronx Hall of Fame with a street named after him, and ran the New York City Marathon to raise funds and awareness on education in public schools and kidney disease.
The song “Don’t Your Worry ’bout a Thing” is taken from the 1973 Stevie Wonder abum Innervisions. The album Innervisions was a landmark recording of Stevie’s “classic period.” It is also regarded as Wonder’s transition from the “little Stevie Wonder” and romantic romantic ballads to a more musically mature, conscious and grown-up artist. With Wonder being the first artist to experiment with the arp synthesizer on a large scale, Innervisions became hugely influential to the subsequent future of commercial black music.
The song’s lyrics convey a positive message, focusing on taking things in one’s stride and accentuating the positive. Music critic Chris Harvey wrote in The Daily Telegraph, “With its playful Latin-piano-and-street-jive intro and its uplifting, upward-spiralling chorus, “Don’t You Worry ‘bout a Thing” easily takes its place among the works of pure joy that the musical prodigy has effortlessly poured out throughout his career … It sounds and feels like a burst of summer happiness.”
Certainly a good message for mid-December, 2020.