A Conversation with Jon Batiste – HuffPost 11.6.13

Mike Ragogna: Jon, you’ve got a new album, Social Music, and you’re pretty much on the road non-stop these days.

Jon Batiste: Yeah, since the Summer. We were in Europe for three months and now we’re on the road from October to April.

MR: And you’re all doing your best to “Stay Human,” if you get my drift?

JB: Well, I think the idea of staying human is all about the live music experience. You have all these people who come up to a show and it’s like they sometimes can forget, in this modern technological world, the true power of a genuine human exchange in a live musical experience.

MR: Do you feel like your music naturally brings people together?

JB: That’s the whole point. It’s an artistic statement as well, but the intent of the music is for people to come together from all different backgrounds and different places and whether you like this genre or that genre, there’s something in it for you and it’s played with the spirit of inclusiveness. It’s such a montage of musical traditions that when we play it, there’s something for everybody and it brings people together who never may have found anything in common if it wasn’t for the music.

MR: What separates the music in the various projects you’ve been associated with?

JB: The separation is in the ensemble, for one. This is the Stay Human ensemble and these guys have created with me a sound and a chemistry that is unique to this ensemble that’s not on the other recordings. Also Social Music is a statement, it’s an evolution of a concept and the concept has evolved to actually now their title and it’s the first installment of that. Before, the recordings that we made such as Times In New Orleans or even the stuff that’s not necessarily in a jazz or New Orleans music vein has still been more undeveloped whereas this record plays as if it were one piece. You have to listen to it from the beginning to the end. It’s a concept record in that way. So it represents what the whole of social music is all about, everything coming together in a sequenced way.

MR: It also reminds me of albums by Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea and similar artists who were trying to make artistic statements within an album. Fusion keeps coming to mind.

JB: Yes! Well the thing about this and what fusion was is that right now, I’m responding to what’s happening in our world and fusion was a response to what was happening in the world in the seventies. So there’s a different sentiment there and the thing about social music again with this ensemble, our experiences are at the heart of this music more so than it being a mix of genres. Our experience of playing in a subway band–which is where part of the harmonabord ensemble with the tambourine was born–it wasn’t thinking about different genres, it was thinking about, “How do I play in the subway without a piano and a drum set?” Different forms of our arrangements and how they evolved has come from the experiences of us playing in all types of venues, from a stage like Carnegie Hall to playing in the subway and then playing in some club in the middle of London or playing in the public square. It’s just very tailored to our experience in the world that we live in right now.

MR: You’ve collaborated with a lot of different people, for example, Prince, Lauryn Hill, Lenny Kravitz… Do you find that in general, you’re more of a collaborative artist?

JB: It’s very collaborative but in an artist, the greatest attribute is that you’re contributing to something great. You’re never going to create something great on your own, and even if you do make something that’s spectacular by yourself, it can always be enhanced by a collaboration because someone else always has something that you don’t have and vice versa. So for me, collaboration being the nature of the music that we play and being the nature of what it actually means to be a great artist. Even Picasso had a team of people working with him. So you just have to always be open to the idea of someone else bringing something to the table that you don’t have and it makes the pot richer. So I definitely am a collaborator. All great artists that I admire are collaborators as well.

MR: Jon, what was it like working with Prince and what was that result?

JB: With Prince, it’s interesting because when you work with him, you’re collaborating with him but you’re stepping into his world. You’d play these shows and you could see that he’s cultivated a world around him that basically is serving his vision and it helps him to create the way that he does because everything that happens off the bandstand and outside the studio is all a function of the arts. It’s interesting to see how he does that and how he created that for himself over such a long career. It was very interesting for me to learn that and I learned a lot from that as I do when I collaborate with anyone who’s been doing it for a long time.

MR: Yeah. Well what’s interesting is it’s not about the end result, is it? It’s about the actual process.

JB: The process is something that is interesting because the audience is not ever really a part of the process. They’re not behind the scenes when you’re creating things, which you do. They really have the impact of the end result because when they hear it, whether you made it in fifteen minutes or fifteen years, if it moves them, it moves them. For the artist, the process is paramount because how you get to that end result really takes some time to figure out how it works for you, because it’s different for everybody. Even for you, it’s different every time. Sometimes you can have a process and something can happen spontaneously that takes you off course. Now what? It’s interesting in that way.

MR: Right. By the way, I see you’ve worked with Questlove, Wynton Marsalis, and then I see Jimmy Buffett’s name pop up. Gee, which one of these things is not like the other, huh?

JB: [laughs] It’s all music. That’s the beauty of it all.

MR: Hey, let’s talk about New Orleans and your history. You’re part of the Batiste dynasty, your brothers, the whole deal. How do you think that plays into how you got musically molded?

JB: Oh, easily in the sense of growing up around music and being in a musical environment, it’s the key to development. You can be a great musician and if you’re in the middle of nowhere, your development isn’t as accelerated as if you were around a whole bunch of music who were basically making you into a champion. If you want to be a champion, you have to hang out with champions. So it was really fortunate for me to grow up in an environment where there’s a ton of music all around and it’s in the culture and it’s in my family and then to go from that to New York for ten years and being a part of this culture that’s basically a gateway to the world. It’s such a global culture, you know? All of these cultures mixed into one. All of that has really formed me as an artist.

MR: Yeah. It just seems like this particular part of the world, New Orleans, there’s something magical that you can’t even put your finger on about its music and creative spark.

JB: It’s beautiful in the sense of how organic it came to be because New Orleans, physically, that point on the map was a port city and it was one of the earliest port cities in the United States, even before it was a full-formed nation. So you had all of these different cultures going back and forth, in and out, trading. That, mixed with the Africans and the rhythmic concept that they brought to Congo Square, it was the breeding ground for something artistically to happen and then you put that together for hundreds of years and let it marinate and this is what you get.

MR: You have quite a background as far as your education that includes attending Juilliard. When you look back at those days and you look at what you’re doing now, is there a link? Can you attribute to your education where you’ve landed now creatively?

JB: Definitely, because the education gives it an element that doesn’t always come in to being if you’re just self-taught. That element is a certain thing that balances out what it is that I’ve naturally garnered from being in New Orleans and being a part of a musical family. The beauty of growing up in New Orleans at the time that I did is that I was always able to have access to a great education as far as music. Arts in schools are always being cut, always, but that was one thing in New Orleans that we always had access to. I remember I took classical piano lessons at the same time that I started playing shows around town and then I started to study with a great mentor of mine and I went to the New Orleans Center For The Creative Arts in High School as well as the Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp with all of the greatest teachers that you can imagine in New Orleans who were still around. The Marsalis family, the Jordan family, Allen Batiste and my family, they all taught at the camp. So from the time I was thirteen up until the time I was seventeen–and I moved to New York for Juilliard–I was always being taught and had a great education with music, which is another rare thing outside of the New Orleans culture that taught me, having actual pedagogy was a beautiful thing for me and it definitely formed me to be where I’m at now.

MR: That’s beautiful that you value education because, like you said, that’s the first thing that schools cut back on, the music department. They’ll give money, mainly, it seems, to the sports teams because of the money they generate.

JB: Right, right. It’s because right now, philosophically, the culture has a great understanding of the importance of math and science and languages and stuff, but no one has figured out a tangible way to explain to people who are not artists the importance of the arts to the cultural well being. I’m afraid that things are going to have to get to a point either where someone figures out how to make that argument or it gets to the point in culture where things are at an all-time low and people realize, just based on the nature of things, that it needs to change.

MR: Which brings us back to your approach of basically trying to “stay human.” Can it be argued that we are reaching that point now? Not that technology’s bad, but it’s taken over the creative base because it’s cool, it’s fun, as opposed to an emphasis being put on musical education, performing in ensembles, getting vocal training, all of that?

JB: Right, right. The thing is that the technology could actually help accelerate that process, it’s just that it’s not of value for the artistic component that comes along with being an artist and playing an instrument and learning how to actually know what instruments do and what it means to actually play in a band or sing in a choir. That kind of stuff is not valued. It actually could be accelerated with all of this great technology, but what’s happening is that technology is taking the place of it, which is why Stay Human does what we do. I think people haven’t figured out how to integrate all of this technology into our everyday lives, because if you think about it, technology is really new, so we really haven’t figured out how to assimilate everything and stay human. So we want to give people a reminder of the importance of that.

MR: Jon, you appeared in Tremé and you also in Red Hook Summer. So you’ve got a bit of an acting bug?

JB: It’s funny, before heading out to Connecticut today I was on set with Spike. I’m in the next movie he’s doing, I think it’s going to be out after the November releases. That’s really been dropping into my lap, so to speak. I haven’t really pursued acting as far as getting an agent and everything like that, it’s something that I did on the side, always, when I was a kid and I’ve continued to do it. It’s really cool to express myself in that way.

MR: You’re also the Associate Artistic Director at the National Museum in Harlem, right?

JB: Yeah, I was just actually appointed to be Artistic Director at large, so I’m taking an even bigger role there and I’m excited about that because it’s an educational platform. And as we talked about earlier in this interview, education has always been cut, so I’m excited about the idea of being able to spearhead a movement in education of youth jazz culture.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

JB: New artists have to remember why they chose to be an artist in the first place. As simple as that sounds, when you get into money and you get into fame and notoriety and all that stuff that comes with creating a career, it’s really hard. It’s also very difficult to keep a balance between art and commerce, so the best thing–and I feel like this is like the north star, it’s a guiding light–always remember why you do what you do and why you decided to do it in the first place. That somehow, whether or not it makes logical sense, you’ll always make the right decisions in terms of the career/commerce side of the business. It doesn’t necessarily make sense on a business angle, but you’ll feel better with yourself, and as an artist, to me that’s the key. If you don’t feel good about it, you can’t deliver anything of value to people.

MR: Is this what you would have told a younger Jon?

JB: The thing about it is, I had my dad around to tell me, which was awesome. He still does. If I wasn’t able to have my dad around to tell me and learn from the mistakes that they made, then I would definitely tell a young Jon that.

MR: One of your quotes is that you want people to find “the truth.” Do you feel successful in this mission?

JB: That’s something that I never really know. All I can do is put it out there in a way that I see it. I can just call it how I see it, put it out there and if it resonates with somebody, then that’s the biggest blessing. But if not, that’s really what we’re called to do as artists and maybe over time, it will resonate with people. Maybe over time, it won’t. Maybe right now, it will. It’s something you can’t really predict. You just hope that it comes across.

MR: Well, that’s another thing that I was going to ask you, what do you really want to accomplish in the future?

JB: As I was talking about the museum and everything, that’s the educational component and whether it’s at the museum or not, I’d love to make some sort of impact in terms of art and culture, and I think the way to do that is through education. Of course, I want to continue to spread the music and spread the joy and uplift people through live performance, continue to create with the band and create ideas that are artistically pushing things in a direction that’s forward and hopefully innovative. But beyond that, my main goal with all of it is to really make an impression so that the next generation of people coming up after me have a better cultural climate in that there’s an alternative to what has become the only culture, which is pop culture. I’m not necessarily against pop culture but bringing people back to that power to transform lives.

MR: And to be able to have love riots.

JB: Oh, yes. [laughs] We had one last night. It was downtown in New York, it was great. Questlove came by to DJ and he played drums, too. We had a love riot in the streets.

MR: Are you excited to keep these love riots going on your tour?

JB: Yeah, well that’s one of the elements that brings people together no matter where they come from. That experience is like a ritual. It’s their moment. It’s the kind of thing that people may not even know who we are and where we come from but when they hear the music and see the energy and feel the energy, then all of a sudden, people just come to us. That’s why we call it a riot, people just continue to build and build and they go crazy with energy, but it’s not negative so it’s a love riot. It’s not like they’re breaking things, it’s everybody coming together. We see people talking to each other after we’re done playing, standing around, not wanting to go anywhere. That’s the beauty of it. That’s when we know we did it right.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne