Catching Up with Jon Batiste
Photography by Louis Browne
Jon Batiste embodies the idea of one’s passions aligning with their purpose. Seeing the value and beauty in any environment he’s in, Batiste infuses every part of his experience into the music he makes, and this shines bright through all of his work. This is made possible by his natural inkling and dedication to music and its ability to amplify our connections with others. Batiste celebrates these connections through uplifting tracks infused with spiritual and personal messages. For Batiste, music, amongst other things, is an opportunity to “give people a window into what's after all this, a window into the things that's to come that's actually bigger and better.”
With this boundless mindset in tow, Batiste’s creative career as a musician and bandleader has led him far and wide. From growing up in New Orleans to working on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to working on Disney Pixar’s Soul, the multi-instrumentalist continues to amplify the culture and tradition of Jazz music with all he does. Set to release his next album We Are in the spring of 2021, Jon brought his infectious and inspiring energy to a live panel (hosted by °1824) to talk about his upcoming album, passions and purposes, and much more. Check out some of our favorite quotes from the Q&A below.
On his start in music and what inspired him…
Wow, that’s a journey, I’m still on the journey, to be honest, but I was really in a musical environment. I grew up in New Orleans, my father is a musician, I have uncles that are musicians, my cousins are obviously musicians. It's a very musical city, it's a hub of Black culture and world culture colliding all in these ways that are influential and inspiring. And then I moved to New York, I was 17 and I went to Juilliard and I studied at Juilliard then that exposed me to a whole range of stuff musically and I just always followed my curiosity. I never was someone who thought “I’m gonna go and be a musician.” I was just pursuing things that inspired me and it kept leading me down the path from New Orleans to New York and then to putting the band together and then I was going to tour all around the world and then I got into TV and it’s just continuing to build on itself, but the first step was really my dad being there and playing bass in the house.
How Black ingenuity and creativity are treated in the music industry and the impact its had on his career…
This country is an experiment of cultures coming together and you had Indigenous people and Black people at the center of so much that it’s become undeniable. Whether we like it or not, those of us who are musicians can't avoid being influenced by Black music; those of us who are in culture and proponents of culture can't avoid Black culture, it's just a part of the DNA, it's like the air we breathe. And I think that we've gone through times where we were reluctant to recognize Black genius but that's different to being influenced by it. I think the undeniable quality of the culture is something that we’ll always struggle with if we’re viewing things through the prism of race and racism is still a part of our methodology. As far as how it has impacted me, I've had both the good fortune of being born into a lineage of Black culture and being a leader in Black culture that has given me the opportunity to forward it, spread it, and innovate. And I've also dealt with the stereotypical nature of being viewed as a Black performer thus put in a box based off someone else's ignorance. There are ups and downs and at this moment we have the opportunity —as we've had many times in the past—to undergo a great unlearning, but I don't necessarily think it will happen unless people continue to talk about it.
On the recording process of his upcoming album, We Are…
If I'm writing something or if I’m playing somewhere, the place that I’m in and the people that are there, or the people that aren't there if I'm in solitude, and the history of the place that I'm in, the instrument that I'm using, the mic that I'm singing into, and the shoes that I’m dancing in, whatever it is, it goes into the work. That’s why you hear people who have this special guitar or a special place that they go or they have a certain room in the house where they write, it's just inevitable. I had the pleasure of working with many different musicians and different creatives who brought their energy and their life story to the record. That was all very meaningful to me. I did a lot of recording in my dressing room at the Ed Sullivan Theatre where we tape The Late Show. My dressing room was the dressing room for the legendary Carol Burnett[…]I got to meet her and collaborate with her, and she told me stories I didn't even know happened in my dressing room at Ed Sullivan Theatre. You know, that's where The Beatles played, that’s where James Brown played, Elvis did his first, you know the hips thing? The hips dance! I like to believe that all of that energy is just there, it's really just there, and you don't have a choice. That's why you have to choose carefully where you wanna capture your material and where you want to create.
On whether life’s passions are our life’s purpose…
The thing about passion is…we have a built-in passion-finding mechanism which is our heart. The heart is there, and it looks for things to get wrapped up in, it looks for things to grab a hold of, and it gives us so many feelings and emotions and things that will motivate us, and that's good if it's placed in the right thing. But the mind is there to logically process information, the mind lies a lot, and so does the heart. When they’re out of alignment, then the passion leads you astray, and the mind is always looking for things to keep us safe. Hence, there's a lot of fear sometimes in our mind, and the heart is looking for things to get wrapped up, so there's a lot of “go go go stop go stop,” so it’s very easy to be misled by a passion that's not in alignment. I wouldn't say that our passion is our purpose, but I would say that it is when we are in alignment, and that's the work you gotta do first. We like to eat the candy and the dessert before we actually eat the vegetables because the alignment work is harder than the actual desert.
On Soul’s theme of exploring what we’re born to do…
I think I was born to use the talent I have to make music but not born to play music in essence as the only thing. I think everything is a means to shine a light on the divine nature of humanity and to love each other and to point people to the creator of all things. That's why it's so simple, but it's so hard; the guy in the movie is actually a perfect example in the film. 22, she gets in with the lost souls, and Moonwind is on the boat, and he's like, “people whose passion becomes so much of their life that they lose touch with reality, that's people who become a lost soul,” and that's what I think. I think that our talents are just a means for us to love each other and point people to god and give people a window into what's after all this, a window into the things that's to come that's actually bigger and better. Ultimately, I think that's why when we hear a great piece of music or see a piece of art, it takes us out of here for a minute: it's in the zone. We all have that power in us; we all have it.
On what fans can expect for We Are…
It’s so, so expansive in terms of sound. It’s genreless. I can't even put it in the category of music. I guess it's like a Black pop masterpiece work. It’s a novel, and if you close your eyes, it's a movie. It's meant to be listened to like a novel that you don't skip chapters of or a movie. You can’t skip the scene, or you won't even know what happened. It's just one piece, it goes through all the different parts of the story, and my story is in the middle of it. There’s songs where I’m rapping like the video for “Indeed,” I’m doing a Lindy Hop Dance, which is like a Harlem 1930’s dance mixed with modern dance. “Cry” is like a folk song like where the Black farm families, my family goes back four generations, five generations of Black farmers in the South in Georgia. So we got taking folk music back and Americana back to like this Black context, I just was being honest. I think it’s a novel you just listen to in one sitting, and if you open to it, I really do believe you will leave feeling very full every time you just listen to it. It’s almost like a 45-minute meditation that you could take every day.
What inspired the name We Are…
We are. That's it. A lot of times, we wait, and we look around for the answer, and we are. We look around for somebody to save us, we look around for somebody to understand who we are, and I look around at the times that we’re in, and that's the question, and it's the answer. We are? We are. That’s it. That’s why I put it there. It’s something for you, you gotta interpret that one, but it's got a lot to it for you. Bite into that, get it, get the apple, bite it.
Q&A Contributing Publications
the NY Press Board
Juiced Magazine
The Cultural Reset
HumanKind Zine
Post Production Magazine
1824
WLOY Radio
Agma(?) Magazine
IndustryMe
Rowdy magazine
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