Jon Batiste Q&A

BY TOSIN FASEEMO

Jon Batiste is the Golden Globe award-win- ning composer of Disney’s Soul, a new movie about music and self-discovery. He is also an activist and a musician. His newest al- bum, “WE ARE,” comes out on March 19.How does your role as an activist intertwine with your profession as a musician?

Q: How does your role as an activist intertwine with your profession as a musician?

Jon: I look at my role as an activist and musician under the umbrella of being a human. I think that being a human being creates opportunity for
you to tap into your divine nature or your lower nature. We constantly balance between the two. I try to be the best version of myself and it creates opportunity for activism and creating music.

Q: When did you start playing music? How did you first get started/what inspired you?

A: That’s a journey. I’m still on the journey, to be honest. I grew up in New Orleans. My father’s a musician; I have uncles that are musicians; my cousins are musicians. It’s a very musical city; it’s a hub of black culture and world culture colliding in ways that are influential and inspiring. Then I moved to New York. I was 17; I studied at Julliard. That exposed me to a whole range of stuff, musically. I was never someone who thought. “I’m gonna be a musician.” I just pursued things that inspired me and led me down a path. The first step was my dad being there and playing the bass in the house.

Q: Outside of being born into a musical family, how do you see your childhood and growing up in Louisiana shape who you are and what you have done with your music?

A: I think, growing up in the south, there’s a pace to life that is very slow; it allows time for you to be reflective. Growing up in Louisiana in particular, there’s so much that’s culturally different from many other places in the world. There’s specific types of food, traditions. Even the architecture, there are the Spanish areas, the French areas, You’ve got the African influence all over. All of these different ways that you’re subconsciously being taught to appreciate culture, tradition, and community. It’s a slice of life that is very special.

Q: What was the most important thing to you while creating music for Soul to make it stand out a bit more, since the movie is a bit different from what Disney has put out?

A: I wanted to find chord structures and melodies that felt grounded on Earth in the New York world of jazz that I experienced as a teenager getting into the jazz scene. I wanted to have that mixed with a celestial, ethereal, sort of sound. I wanted the chords to come first, because it inspires melodies to come from that. I knew that if I found the emotional worlds of the music through the chords and the melodies, then the rest of it would come. It was a process over two years and I loved it; it was so collaborative.

Q: In “Soul”, the main character, Joe, struggles with the idea that playing music is his purpose in life. Do you feel like you were born to play music?

A: I was born to use the talents that I have to make music, but not born to play music 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.

Q: Your forthcoming album ‘We Are,’ is to be released March 19th. What can we expect from the album?

A: It’s so expansive, in terms of sound; it’s genreless. I can’t even put it in a category of music. It’s a novel. And if you close your eyes, it’s a movie. My story is in the middle of it. There are songs where I’m rapping, there are songs where I’m doing a dance. “Cry” is a folk song. I was just being honest. Just listen to it in one sitting, and if you’re open to it, I really do believe you’ll leave feeling very full.

Q: What inspired the title “WE ARE?”

A: 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. I look around at the times that we’re in, and that’s the question and that’s the answer: we are. That’s why I put it there, it’s something for you. You’ve got to interpret that one.