Jon Batiste is one of the most brilliant, prolific and accomplished musicians today.
For seven years, he was the bandleader and musical director of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. In 2020, he won an Academy Award for best original score for his work on the Pixar film Soul. In 2022, he won five Grammy Awards, including album of the year for We Are.
His new album World Music Radio is full of inspiration. With it, Batiste is on a mission to create community and expand culture with the power of music. He joined us in the Gumbo Kitchen to tell us more about it.
This new album is blowin’ my mind, and it’s blowin’ people’s minds around the world, isn’t it?
Oh, man, great response from around the world. I’m just glad to be able to tune into the frequency of World Music Radio.
This is a concept album about radio. What did radio mean to you growing up in New Orleans as a kid?
We used to listen to the radio and record the radio station, because you know, when the song goes by, sometimes you may not be able to hear it again, and if you missed the description of what it was, you may lose a song. It’s like catching a fish and throwing it back.
New Orleans radio must have been mind-blowing.
Genre-less. Everything was on the radio. It was a time when there was a lot of change in New Orleans music. You had the incredible sounds of the leaders of the jazz movement: Ellis Marsalis and the Batiste family — my family, obviously. You also had hip hop from New Orleans and funk from New Orleans that was evolving on the national stage. You’d hear the early stages of all these different kinds of music, and it would be positioned where you’d hear one song that’s one genre and another song that’s another genre and then another song that’s another genre right after that.
I’m older than you, but I remember back in the day listening to the radio and they’d play Led Zeppelin and then Cindi Lauper on the same station. That doesn’t happen anymore.
I think it’s really important to think about that time period of the mid-2000s where we were just getting into streaming, and before that, that wasn’t what the world was doing. We had radio.
Speaking of radio DJs, on this album World Music Radio, you have this radio guy named Billy Bob Bo Bob and he takes listeners on this musical journey. Where did he come from?
It just came to me. It was an epiphany. I loved that it came to me, but I can’t tell you that I know where it came from.
In my mind, genres are another way to keep people apart. On this album, you’re just knocking down boundaries, and this record defies genre.
Oh my goodness, you can’t be boxed in. I love the way that people who listen to music now are more and more open. I just think it’s the direction we’re going. It’s beautiful. It’s all just radical love and oneness.
You have these incredible guests on this album. It sounds almost like a movie, it’s very cinematic. It sounds like these folks aren’t just singers, but they’re almost actors, too. You’re almost like a casting director on this record.
Absolutely. That’s exactly right. I was thinking about things like that. I was thinking of it as a movie. We even created these incredible storyboards. If you see a movie, there are all the frames and the characters and the backstories, and how the frames relate to each other and what needs to happen to transition from one frame to the next frame. That’s how I was thinking about this album. It’s really meant to be listened to like that. If you’re listening to an album like a movie, sure, you have favourite parts and you can tune in to certain parts, but [if you listen] straight from the front to the back of the album in one sitting, you really get an experience that way.
When you have an album that’s as successful as We Are, you must wonder what to do next. I’m sure there’s the temptation or pressure to play it safe. You didn’t do that. How do you not let that success affect your art?
You just keep creating. It’s really simple and hard at the same time. You do what you were doing already, and you try to just stay the course. If you’re sticking with that, you’re going to have new ideas and new inspirations, and inevitably, it’s going to be a different thing. It’s going to be something that’s special in its own right, because that’s where you are at the time. That’s really one of the things that I key into when I’m creating — how to keep it pure, how to keep the intention very pure. That way I’m not trying to imitate or outdo anything that I’ve done or that anyone else has done. I’m just channelling what I’m feeling at the moment.
Let’s talk about the song “Call Now (504-305-8269).” I know that area code. This is some old-school funk, man.
I want to make sure people know that that’s a real number.
I know, I called it!
I was thinking of not saying that, but I want to say it, because some folks, when they’re listening, they’re afraid to call because they don’t know if it’s a real number. I want you to know you can give it a call and Billy Bob Bo Bob is on the other side waiting to greet you with warm wishes and open arms.
This is a big record, but “Life Lesson,” with Lana Del Rey, and “Butterfly” seem almost larger than the rest of the album yet so minimalist.
Of course, they’re worlds unto themselves. I love that, because when you have all of these incredible sonic tapestries, energies, instrumentation and arrangements, when you break it down to just the piano and the voice, it feels larger than life. That’s something that I’ve noticed over the years of travelling and learning about different styles of music. Something that’s special about the piano is that when you sit down and you play and sing, you can incorporate all of that. It’s a full orchestra. It’s 88 keys. It’s the full sonic range of glory. I always love to have moments like that, where I break the music down to its simplest form. For me, that’s me at the piano with a microphone.
This interview has been edited and condensed.