Jon Batiste on His New Album “World Music Radio”

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, HOST: Now, to a musical genius challenging genres. Jon Batiste has been busy. After winning five Grammys at last year’s awards, including Album of the Year, he is back with a new record called “World Music Radio.” The concept album weaves his signature style of jazz, funk and soul with global artists Lana Del Rey, Lil Wayne, and K-pop girl group, NewJeans. Here is a taste of the single, “Calling Your Name.”

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JON BATISTE, MUSICIAN, “WORLD MUSIC RADIO”: Sun and the stars, night and the day. All of the while I was calling your name. I would get so lost in my feelings, head in the clouds. I would get so caught up in believing something about. But you feel so good in my spirit, it’s all over me now. No, I can’t go back no more

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GOLODRYGA: To break down this wonderful album, Jon talks to Michel Martin.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Bianna. Jon Batiste, welcome. Thank you for joining us once again.

JON BATISTE, MUSICIAN, “WORLD MUSIC RADIO”: Yes, indeed. Hello.

MARTIN: It’s always a good day when we see Jon Batiste.

BATISTE: Likewise. I’m so glad to be back.

MARTIN: Well, before we talk about the new album, I mean, what a year. You were nominated for 11 Grammys, you won five. And this is on top of having won an Oscar. How do you take it all in?

BATISTE: I just — I love the ability to create. And I put so much pressure on myself in the creative process that once I’m done with the project, I’m spent. I’m totally —

MARTIN: Yes.

BATISTE: I’ve given it my all. So, I — it’s hard to think about my reaction until many years later, because I to process the creative part, and then all that comes after it, the awards, the performances, the different things that I hear from folks who have invited the art into their lives. And it really does take me a few years to process things.

MARTIN: The new album, “World Music Radio.” It’s crazy. It’s crazy. I just — it really does feel like a journey, right? It feels like a trip. First of all, “World Music Radio,” why that?

BATISTE: Well, you know, it started as a prompt, world music and popular music. You know, if you look at pop music you look at world music, it feels that in the last 10 years or more they’ve become more and more synonymous with each other. And the concept of world music as a genre is a horrendous — it’s an atrocious genre, conception. It’s really so marginalizing to cultures outside of America and Europe. It puts them all — all of the cultures outside of America and Europe bunched together as one and it’s call world music, like it’s completely otherized. So, I thought, well, wouldn’t it be an interesting prompt to reimagine what that could mean in the popular music context and use that as something that we can expand popular music thinking about. So, I thought, wow, look at all the great music that’s coming out of the continent of Africa. If you go to Asia, you’ll see all the incredible artists that have come — Latin America, South America, all the incredible artist in the popular cultural space, that would be interesting. It didn’t turn into “World Music Radio” until the latest stages of the creative process, like maybe nine months into the process before I was done. I had the epiphany that it was a concept album. That it was an album where you lived through it by a character that I play. I’m the alter-ego of Jon Batiste. There’s this character named Billy Bob Bo Bob who was is a DJ, who is an interstellar real, who is a — he’s like an all-knowing being that somehow, down home, and very charming in this way that he guides you through the album. So, all of this happened maybe a month before we were done. So, that is how we got to “World Music Radio.”

MARTIN: So, talking about the music again. It has so many interesting flavors and kind of nuances. And also, really famous collaborators, you know, something that, you know, we haven’t necessarily seen with you before. I mean, obviously, when you were the band leader for “The Late Show,” you had a number of great artists come in and sometimes they’ve sit in with you. But this idea of collaborating with some of these really big names, you know, Lana Del Rey and then Lil Wayne, how did that ideal come to you?

BATISTE: Well, I thought about it from the perspective of casting a movie. And the album is so much like a movie. It’s really like you are watching a film. You’re listening to it and you’re watching the film in your mind’s eye, and it’s really all these moments that happened and all the symbolism in the album with certain characters and certain elements. Water is a symbol in the album. Butterfly is a symbol in the album. So, I thought about all these moments that, in the sequence needed someone to step forward, another character, another voice. And it just happened to be, wow, you know, this is best for Kenny G. to do, and this is Lil Wayne and, you know, this is NewJeans. This is — it created a tapestry that was very diverse.

MARTIN: We talked earlier about how marginalized and your otherizing like the whole idea of world music can be. It’s like there’s — we get to be here in the West, like — or in the United States, let’s say, or the U.K., we get to be pop and jazz and classical, but everybody else gets to be world.

BATISTE: Yes. Like that’s the rest of the world’s music.

MARTIN: That’s — yes. That’s the rest of them. That’s them. But you — and you are including songs and languages that perhaps are not as familiar to people. And I was thinking here about “My Heart,” where you feature a Catalonian singer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BATISTE: There’s another thing that I think is really interesting with music and languages, and the idea that you can have a song or you can have a popular music album that exist in more languages than just one. And, you know, I think that it’s an amazing opportunity to think about expression and the use of language as a part of your expression in the popular music sphere. The idea that “My Heart,” you know, I can sing in Spanish or even in the Catalonian dialect of Spanish to create this emotion. It heightens the emotion. Rita Payez is an incredible artist who, you know, we were able to — you know, I didn’t know her. I discovered her online. She’s an unsigned artist who plays the trombone and sings on this song. And she’s an incredible artist that it moved me to the point that I wanted to step into that space to represent the emotion of the song we collaborated on. And that’s the kind of thing that — you know, there’s so many possibilities there. And on the album, you hear different languages throughout. But that one in particular, I’m very proud of how it really heightened the stakes of what we were doing.

MARTIN: Tell me more about “Master Power.”

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BATISTE: In their grimy hour, there’s a master power.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARTIN: It’s kind of got a country feel, but it has prayer intonations. Tell a little more about that. I heard some kind of Muslim call to prayer intonations. Do you want to talk a little about it?

BATISTE: Yes, yes. There is a lot of sort of (ph) radical choices on this album. So, I’d never heard that before. I never experienced it, but I thought there was such a common thread between the call to prayer and the different songs that you may here, the cantor sing in the Jewish tradition or you would hear in the country music tradition where there’s gospel songs and southern country songs or, you know, Johnny Cash, southern shuffles, and that kind of sound. And I never heard them put together. And I also had never heard sampling done in a way where it’s not such an overt texture in the music, but it’s something that blends almost with the instrumentation but kind of juxtaposes all of these different forms of worship, acknowledgment of the master power, the ultimate — the master of the universe in that kind of creative — it created a milieu that speaks to that but from these really unexpected pairings.

MARTIN: One of the messages, if I can put it that way, of the album is kind of unity togetherness and stop hating. You know, basically, just let’s enjoy and appreciate each other. In fact, like in the “Master Power,” you say, I love you if — even if I don’t know you, you know? And then, in another track you say, love black folks and white folks, my Asians, my Africans, my Afro, Eurasian, Republican or Democrat. It’s one of the tracks that’s gotten a lot of attention so far.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARTIN: Is there anything about that that scares you or that you feel won’t be well received?

BATISTE: No. I think that, ultimately, there’s an interesting thing that happens when you’re truly yourself. And there is an authenticity that resonates with people, right? It’s something that connects with people. And people want to know your heart. Ultimately, we’re dealing with issues where the things that divide us are mostly rooted in a belief that the person on the other side doesn’t care if we live or die. And how do you resolve anything if you are framing the conversation debate in that way? The context of having radical love is not one of agreeing or even one of accepting the things that are atrocities to your humanity and the humanity of others. It’s not a way of marginalizing any group either. I think that the idea of what frames the conversations and how we have productive conversations and how we ultimately mobilize and how we live in a space that is a form of activism but also a form of humanity, that’s the question that I would like to address through my art, in an abstract way, and through my life, in a very real deliberate way.

MARTIN: You know people say it’s kind of a cliche, but it also happens to be true that music is a universal language. Do you have sort of a vision for what you hope your music will do?

BATISTE: God is love. Yes, indeed. I have a vision for my music and what I hope it will do. But ultimately, I think the music that any artist makes belongs to the public, once it’s released, once it’s a part of their lives and it’s a part of what they do. I just hope my music always leads to love and always leads to people having a deeper sense of humanity, a deeper sense of insight, a deeper sense of what it means to be alive and appreciation for what that is. And I think that that’s in the frequency of the music. It reaches people in a way where you don’t need words and I don’t need to prescribe what I want the music to be in their lives. It grows into — it walks into that. It’s almost like faith.

MARTIN: You are classically-trained. You know, you’ve worked across categories. You know, Duke Ellington’s highest compliment was to say to someone that they were beyond category, right? And I think you’ve striven to be, you know, beyond category. But do you have a hope them? I mean, especially collaborating with some of these pop artists that perhaps you’ll reach an audience that had not been exposed to you before?

BATISTE: I just think that with this album, it should be in the conversation of popular music in the same way, you know, we talk about anybody who is in the top 10 of the charts. I see this album as being in that conversation, certainly. Whether it reaches that point or not is not a success or failure of the album. But for me, this is an album that is geared reaching the widest range of people without compromising any of my artistry and who I am. And thus, further expanding what can be placed in the popular music category. Now, for me to do that and to not compromise is the achievement. Because the achievement of doing that as an artist takes so many years of knowing thy self and knowing who you want to be as an artist, to be able to find a way to sculpt something that is uncompromising yet addresses the time that you’re in and the culture that you’re in. It’s such a painstaking process with so much that you have to really think about to execute on that. So, I’m proud of that, in and of itself, as an achievement. Even if I’m the only person who listens to it. Maybe that’s not healthy or what the label wants me to say, but it’s the truth. But ultimately, it is in the conversation with the — you know, The Weeknds or the Taylor Swifts of the world or whoever it is that you want to talk about. And I also think that, not only that, I’m excited to tour this album because, believe it or not, you know, I was seven years as a student at Juilliard for the age of 17, then a couple years where I was building the band, Stay Human, and then, we were on television for seven years with Stay Human. And just last year is the first time I’ve ever created an album without this sort of occupational duress of doing many other things at once. And I’ve never toured. This will be the first time I’ve toured. And there’s so many people who, around the world, I want to go out and meet and see and be in person with and share this music with from the stage and in the communities that have supported me all these years. So, the biggest marker of success will be, how many places in the world can I bring this “World Music Radio” show to?

MARTIN: Well, before we let you go and, you know, you don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to, but it has become known that your long- term partner, now your wife, has been battling for years with a serious health condition. And you’ve been by her side, you know, for all of it, as she has been by your side through your journey. And I do find myself kind of wondering if being so close to something so hard has affected your art in this way as well? You are sense of, you know, at the core, we really are just trying to stay human, you know, as your band title would say. And I just wondered if that proximity to such a difficult journey has influenced this work and this album in particular?

BATISTE: For sure. There’s a song — the song “Butterfly” on the album is written specifically with that in mind. But in general, overall, I’ve changed as a person in my approach to life. And ultimately, my approach to creating, which is, you know, you can’t have the person who is your person so close to the veil and not be changed from that experience. So, the way that it’s changed me is something I’m still processing. But I know for certain that it’s made me more fearless. And I already thought I was fearless, but, you know, I just want to give the audience the best quality art that I can create and I also want to do it where I’m not compromising myself and I’m not doing anything that is out of integrity, because we only have a show awhile (ph) and we represent not just ourselves but all of the people we love and who love us. You know, we can’t be messing around out here. And that’s a message for anybody out there. Do your thing. You know, you got it. Don’t hold it. And don’t make yourself — your frequency dim for any reason, you know. Just, fearless. Pursue.

MARTIN: Jon Batiste, thank you so much for talking with us once again. It’s always a joy.

BATISTE: Yes, indeed.