The Montreal Jazz Festival opened on Tuesday night with a free outdoor concert by Stevie Wonder, another Motown Records child prodigy.

He kicked off the over 2 hour long concert with a speech about Michael Jackson who, as we know, was his friend.

He talked about the legacy of Michael Jackson as being his music and his dancing; he talked about the often vicious rumours that have brought Michael Jackson down; he basically reminded us that Michael Jackson was, first and foremost, and human being, and we can each choose the way we interact with him.

Andrew Sullivan is right to be grieving the culture that created Michael Jackson and, ultimately, destroyed him – because it’s doing the same thing to everyone else.

I don’t know how many people actually listened to Stevie Wonder last night and heard the message: we should stop contributing to this mad culture which has already taken a lot from us.

To read more about the concert, go here, here, or here, or here.

Some clips:

And clips from the earlier sound check: