[music]

Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart and welcome to a new series which we're calling Listening Party Live. You know our listening parties where I talk to musicians and break down the process of songwriting and production behind new album releases as well as hear about the musicians' inspirations. Well, this is that, but with live performances in front of a live studio audience hosted in The Greene Space. Today you're going to hear highlights from our inaugural event featuring none other than the Grammy-winning, Oscar-winning, almost definitely EGOT-bound singer, songwriter, composer and multi-instrumentalist Jon Batiste.

His last album, We Are, earned him five Grammys, including Album of the Year. He joined us to talk about his follow-up, World Music Radio. It's a concept album that takes us on a global and cross country musical journey, guided by Jon and his alter ego, an interstellar radio host named Billy Bob Bo Bob. There are some fellow travelers on this musical trip. Lil Wayne, Lana Del Rey, and even Kenny G, plus K-pop group, NewJeans, the Colombian singer Camilo, and more.

On Monday, Jon joined us solo for a night of music and talk. He broke down songs piece by piece and reimagined others for just piano and voice in an intimate setting, engaging a small and enthusiastic sold-out audience in WNYC's Greene Space. Let's kick things off with a bit of his opening performance, a reinterpretation of a song from the album World Music Radio, here's Raindance.

[MUSIC - Jon Batiste: Raindance]

Rico

Told me you messed up, my friend

And Rico always tells it like it is

Speak to me nicely

Speak to me nicely

The place that you left me is the place that you find me

I need your water to wash all the nights that

Got away, got away, got away, yes

When you gon’ arrive in the sky to let your love down

I been waiting for it to come down

Give me love for the life of me, ayy

I know you gotta see to believe that I’m a changed man

I look up and do my Raindance

Give me love for thе life of me, ayy

When you gon’ arrive in the sky to let your love down

Alison Stewart: You're listening to Jon Batiste live from The Greene Space on Monday night. He kicked things off with a reimagining of the song Raindance from his latest album, World Music Radio. Now, here's where we get into the how and why of making music. Here's our conversation.

[music]

Alison Stewart: 2021, you release We Are. 2022, you wrote a symphony you performed at Carnegie Hall, which during that time, you allowed a documentary film crew to follow you around while you were creating that. I did say I wasn't going to talk about awards, but this just happened before you walked in here. That documentary, American Symphony, has been nominated for six Critics Choice Documentary Awards. That just happened.

[applause]

Jon Batiste: Rico. Yes.

Alison Stewart: So the serious question is, how do you clear your mind to start working on something new?

Jon Batiste: You just make stuff with no expectations. You have high lofty goals when you're making it, but then you just make it, and you get lost in the process of doing that. Then I think it clears your mind because you're worried about actually achieving the goal that you have. The goal is so big sometimes, and creatively it pushes you so far to the limit of what you think you might do, a limit of people's expectation, or your own expectation of yourself even, your collaborators. Then you get to a point where you're like, "I don't know if we actually going to be able to pull this one off." Then you get to the last minute, always comes together. Trust the process.

Alison Stewart: You told The New York Times that the seed of this idea came from an encounter with Rick Rubin. Y'all know who Rick Rubin is, right? Super producer.

Jon Batiste: Rick.

Alison Stewart: Rick, who wrote a whole book about creativity, which is an amazing book by the way.

Jon Batiste: Yes, I started this at his studio in Malibu, Shangri-La Studios. It's a very zen space. Shangri-La is the perfect name. It's white. The whole place is just white wood floors, white piano. You see the ocean, you see nothing but grass. Then you walk outside, and there's Willie Nelson's old tour bus, and you can go in the bus and you can record, and then you can record outside, or you can record in the room with the white pool table, or you can record in the studio, actually, which sometimes we did that too.

Then you can find something about each room or each instrument that inspires a melody or a sound, and then I had a bunch of instruments come in that we wanted to experiment with, and musicians and producers and writers who I really loved to work with, and new friends who I loved to meet and work with for the first time. All that happened in the first month, and we left with over 100 ideas, about 50% to 60% done. So that's very productive in the messy, creative beginning of a project.

Alison Stewart: What did you learn from Rick Rubin that you think you'll take forward?

Jon Batiste: Well, you know what's deep? He taught me that I've got to get a studio like that.

[laughter]

Jon Batiste: He wasn't there. I saw him before that, and I was trying to figure out where to start. That's the hardest thing, to figure out where you want to start. Everything starts with the environment and the energy and the people. You're building a little world to build a world, and I wanted to figure out where we could go that felt like we could be open and just explore, no judgment, and start a project. I've been talking with Jamie Krents, the president of the label Verve, and he's a musician. He gets it.

We were talking about, I want to start and I want to make this ambitious project. I don't know what it is yet, and he was like, "Great, let's go do it." It was August of last year, and we went there, and I think I had met Rick in Shangri-La about eight years earlier to that, and I'd always had that spot in the back of my mind, and we'd been in touch, and I never thought of going there until this very moment. I ran into him about a month before that in Italy, and I was telling him about what I was doing, and he said, "Hey, man, you should go to Shangri-La. It'd be a great place for you to do what you're doing." I was like, "Yes, I remember that. Let's do it." It was literally, I've got to get a studio like that.

Alison Stewart: When you start to think about all of the different styles of music and all the different cultures, which ones did you know you really needed to have on this album? Which ones really touched your heart?

Jon Batiste: It's all about relationships with people, because I'm not really trying to recreate the sounds of that culture. Because I could never be in that culture authentically if I'm not from it. What I'm taking inspiration from, and then I'm filtering it through the genre of Jon Batiste and I'm imagining a world, it's almost like a utopia. That's where this character, Billy Bob Bo Bob, that is the alter ego that I played in this concept album. You have this character that guides you through the album.

Really, it's a limitless world that is very specific to who I am, but draws on all of these incredible influences because we took the limitations and we left those at the door. We didn't think about trying to fit into a category or radio format or anything like that. The music also is something that is speaking to where I see the world going and really reclaims and reimagines this idea of world music, which is an atrocious term. If you think about world music as what it actually portends to mean and what it could mean, it's a great prompt to make a not-world music album.

Alison Stewart: We were talking about the name of the album, World Music, and how music is how we communicate. You can communicate with people you don't speak the same language of, but music is the language that you share.

Jon Batiste: It's a sound, and then all of a sudden, you hear that and it makes you feel something and you go back and forth. That's the thing.

Alison Stewart: There was this interesting study at Harvard that said that music is actually universal because all different cultures use music in similar ways. There's dancing in all cultures, there are lullabies in all cultures. People sing about love across cultures. Does that resonate with you?

Jon Batiste: I love that. I believe in that. I think it's like something we're hardwired-- In our computation, there's something in the human system that even when we're babies and the vibrations that we feel or the heartbeat of our parents when we are laying on the chest of our mother or father and you hear the lullaby and you feel the sound vibrate through you, you are 75% water at that stage. I've studied that that feeling stays with you, and that music, in those formative years.

Then in your early teenage years as well is another time when your mind, the vibrations that you take in, and the sounds and the traditions that deliver those vibrations to you become a part of the human tapestry over time and you just add to them, each generation adds to it. That's why it's really important that we see the music as more than just entertainment and more than just something that you can do to make people feel good. It's also a part of our collective wisdom. Anybody who's come to a concert of mine, y'all are part of it. It's not just me up there performing. It's a ritual. People come together and that's very ancestral, I believe that.

Alison Stewart: We'll have more of my conversation with Jon Batiste from our inaugural listening party live event after a quick break, and he'll be breaking down some songs stem by stem. Stay with us.

[MUSIC - Jon Batiste: Calling Your Name]

Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. When you see Grammy and Oscar winner Jon Batiste play a song or hear him talk about the music, it's clear how much thought and care he puts into every detail and every moment. In The Greene Space on Monday evening, we got to experience a little of Jon's process on two tracks from World Music Radio by way of a live masterclass-style song breakdown.

For the evening, we were joined by his collaborator, Kaleb Rollins, a producer, engineer, and songwriter who worked with him on the album World Music Radio. Kaleb was set in the back of the room with a laptop, which had the music editing software, Pro Tools, loaded on it. The screens in The Greene Space displayed Kaleb's monitor with the many, many layers and stems that went into each album songs, the separate tracks of vocals, percussion, guitar. You get the idea. You're going to hear those now with citations, commentary, and some sound effects provided by Jon Batiste. First up, the song Running Away. I'll let Jon take it from here.

Jon Batiste: This one is a song that is really at the tail end of the narrative of the album, it's one of the last three tracks. You get to this track, it's like the moment where through this radio broadcast, you're transported. Wherever you are in the universe, it becomes Saturday night, and from Saturday night into Sunday morning, and the Sunday morning, this song comes on and this moment of cosmic worship is a beautiful thing.

[MUSIC - Jon Batiste: Running Away]

You keep going downtown

But you can't keep running away

But keep going downtown

But you can't keep running away

Jon Batiste: That's the theme right there. We'll hear a little bit and I'll break some of it down for you. Let's play the top.

[music]

Jon Batiste: Right there [unintelligible 00:15:43] Yes, you hear that-

[music]

Jon Batiste: -that chordal sequence at the beginning. What I wanted to do there is to create the narrative but also pay homage to the tradition of the Black American church. What you hear is synthesizers layered in four-part harmony like a Bach chorale, but it's also layered with a B-3 organ and it creates an instrument that sounds familiar, but if you listen closely, it's something that you've never really heard before. It's playing these harmonies that are-

[music]

Jon Batiste: -parallel fits because that's the rule that they say don't do that. In particular, in playable church music, you would play-

[music]

Jon Batiste: -but we say--

[music]

Jon Batiste: That's something that almost ties into the style of that and pays homage sonically to that, but then adds this other element, this futuristic element, but then it puts this, this fits in it almost like a Gregorian chant or like some of the eastern religions. It's already hinting at this idea that at the end of this World Music Radio journey, the whole universe and the whole world, at least, has come together in one place. It's a congregation from all over and you just cue into that in the first four bars. Play that again.

[MUSIC -Jon Batiste: Running Away]

You've got a friend, a lover, a friend, a lover in me

Right next to you, right next to you is where I'll always be

I'll keep on, keep on talking with you, my friend

So keep goin' because I'ma stay with ya until the end

One call is all it takes--

Jon Batiste: Solo that bass drum.

[music]

Jon Batiste: That's what we called knock. That's when you have a trunk rattler, like if you were listening to-- Well, really, it was really made famous in the Dr. Dre The Chronic album in the era of the sound where it's a bass drum, but it's also a frequency that's meant to kick through the speakers in a way that's unorthodox. Now, when you put that with the other chords and what's happening, and then there's a dual meaning to the lyric, you got a friend, a lover, a lover in me, right next to you is where I'll always be, that's Billy Bob telling the listeners that I'm always going to be here because he's about to take off into the next destination to do the next broadcast.

It also can be interpreted as someone speaking to God in prayer and also can be interpreted as speaking to a lover. There's always three meanings to all of the songs on the album. I could go down every song like that, but it would be too much. I just feel like it's-- I want to give you little hints of what we're putting together because it's very subtle how we're putting it together, but it's very nuanced and specific and it's like that throughout the whole album. I think it's important to just point out little things like this kick drum and the chords and the progression and the traditions that they draw from and the way you putting those traditions together and the lyrics and the many different meanings and layers of the lyrics and how it can come across as like a friendly radio broadcaster. There's layers to it all. We can continue-- I don't want to take too much time, but-

Alison Stewart: No, it's fine. I'm interested.

Jon Batiste: Great. Let's keep going.

Alison Stewart: Let's do it.

[MUSIC -Jon Batiste: Running Away]

One call is all it takes (run away)

When your tears fall, fallin' down your face

I wiped them off (yeah) at the end of the day

I'll come runnin', just don't run away

Jon Batiste: Now the strings come in, and this is an instrumental verse. It sets the stage for what's about to happen, and also--

[MUSIC - Jon Batiste: Running Away]

No, I'll come runnin', don't run away

You know it's hard to catch a shootin' star

You got a way to let the sides to park, and that's okay, hm

A couple dollars ain't even enough

Jon Batiste: Solo the guitars. Yes, you-- [laughs]

[MUSIC - Jon Batiste: Running Away]

Jon Batiste: Now, if you've ever been to a folk church or even the early traditions of church like pop staples, but if you put it in the acoustic guitar, which is the early predecessor obviously to rock and roll. When you blend that in there, it naturally builds it. It gives you a cue to this big chorus that's coming. The chorus is where you first actually hear a choir. That's fire.

[laughter]

Jon Batiste: It's almost two minutes into the gospel song of the record, and you ain't heard no choir, but you feel all of that energy. That's the power of sound. Sound goes deeper than lyrics because sound speaks to the impulse of people. It speaks to the invisible realm of what people feel, thoughts, emotions, memories, aspirations. You're hearing all of these sounds and it's telling you something, but you don't even have all of the cues of that thing.

[laughter]

Jon Batiste: Okay, so let's play that right there, when the chorus comes in. I just want you to hear when the choir comes in it has an impact.

[MUSIC - Jon Batiste: Running Away]

You lookin' for answers

You already know in the back of your mind

Ca-ch-ch-ch, you keep goin' downtown (oh)

But you can't keep runnin' away

You keep goin' downtown, oh

But you can't keep runnin' away

You keep goin' downtown

But you can't keep runnin' away

I said, you keep goin'--

[applause]

Jon Batiste: Kaleb, man, Kaleb is amazing. We had a great team. Kaleb and so many other incredible collaborators, Jon Bellion and [unintelligible 00:23:26] Pete Nappi. There's incredible features on the album, musicians that you know of, but there's so many incredible behind-the-scenes and important integral parts of this album.

Alison Stewart: When you're in that, as you're getting excited and describing that, you said normally you do this, but we did that. Then you use the word unorthodox another time. When did you get comfortable coloring outside the lines? When did you really know that that was your space?

Jon Batiste: I was just born like that.

[laughter]

Jon Batiste: I couldn't help it.

Alison Stewart: Sometimes the world tries to push people like that back into the box.

Jon Batiste: Definitely, 1,000%.

[laughter]

Jon Batiste: I like to do it in a way where you can listen to it and it doesn't hit you over the head with it, though. I think that's one of the things that when you first listen to music that I would make, you might not hear that right off. You might feel that or you might intuit that, but the more you listen to it, the more-- that I think was the key for me, that's a form of maturity because at first when you're just coming out of the womb like that, that's just how you think.

I spent many years creating and discovering the sound and philosophy of social music and creating these experiences around that in the studio and on stage, and collaborating with so many different people and learning from several mentors that encourage that. Also, I learned and took things from everybody who I was around. I think at this point, to answer your question, it was more about figuring out how to hone it, not change it.

Alison Stewart: So there were three producers, right, Jon Bellion, who you mentioned, and Ryan Lynn. You've worked with Ryan a lot before.

Jon Batiste: Yes, Ryan.

Alison Stewart: All right. Well, Jon, you bring Jon in and Jon's worked with Eminem, Jo-Bros, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, that's a different world, the pop world. What did he bring out in you that maybe you're like, "I didn't know that."

Jon Batiste: I liked the idea of working with him. We were basketball buddies.

Alison Stewart: Really? [chuckles]

Jon Batiste: We went to games and played basketball. We wanted to make music together but we got around to that four or five years later in this album. A lot of times, even with musicians or collaborators, it's something about a person's carries, the way they are as a person. Even if it's not about me being connected to this person in the present, I know that we could make something or I could feel the energy of something that could happen on the bandstand or something like that. I knew we could make great songs. I just didn't know when the time would be right for it.

This felt like the right time because it was about bridging the worlds of all that I know and not necessarily making something that has everything that I can do in it but something that's cohesively limitless, something that speaks to what the times that I was looking at the music and the culture and everything that's happening. How do I make a statement about that? How do I make something that is authentic to my vision and my artistry, but expands the palette?

It would make sense to have someone like Jon Bellion in the studio, and also the range of other collaborators that you mentioned. I think every single person brought something out of me that I was looking to put into this pot, and to then at the end of the process figure out how do I batistefy all of it?

[laughter]

Jon Batiste: How do I take all of it and then cook a meal? You know what I mean?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Jon Batiste: That's the point I was making earlier, it's hard to know specifically what you're going to make until you're at the end because you're discovering and it's telling you what it wants to be.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting in the documentary, American Symphony, you're doing that with the symphony and there's a couple of people who are like, "I don't know, Jon, I don't know," halfway through, and you're like, "Let it finish. Let's get to the end, at the end we'll be there."

Jon Batiste: Yes. It's like I know what I'm doing, I just can't tell you.

[laughter]

[applause]

Alison Stewart: All right. I feel you.

Jon Batiste: You know what I'm saying?

Alison Stewart: I do.

Jon Batiste: I don't know how else to say it. [chuckles] It's just one of those things.

Alison Stewart: I want that on a shirt.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Could we break down another song?

Jon Batiste: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Could we break down Worship? Kaleb, are you up for it?

[laughter]

Jon Batiste: Let's-- oh, man [unintelligible 00:28:31]

[MUSIC - Jon Batiste: Worship]

We are born the same

Return to that place

Jon Batiste: This was one of those moments where I came back to the studio and Bellion had started this idea for Worship. It was like, "What is this? What is this?" It was-- play that first--

[MUSIC - Jon Batiste: Worship]

We are born the same

Return to that place

Jon Batiste: You hear that cut off.

[MUSIC - Jon Batiste: Worship]

Return to that place

Return to that place

Return to that place

We are born the same

Jon Batiste: When he was cutting the voice off like that, it reminded me of when Basquiat would X out words. Certain things in the painting would be-- he would cover it so that you focus on what the word is more. [unintelligible 00:29:39] I was like, "Man, why did you do that here?" He's like, "It's like a robot that's turning human," and the robot is a very amazing expressive way of talking about music. He's like, "It's like a robot that's turning into a person and they're growing a heart." We are born the same. Return to that place. It's like an allegory for what's happening.

That part really, when I heard that I was like, "Ah, I see the vision for the whole--" It was like when something is so clear, it's like, "Oh, now I know exactly-- this is what we all have to come together and do." This song, man. Just go ahead, Kaleb. I'm going to stop.

[MUSIC - Jon Batiste: Worship]

Jon Batiste: It's like a rocket ship lifting. This is the early part of the album where the celestial expanse. You see Billy Bob and World Music Radio going into this--

[MUSIC - Jon Batiste: Worship]

Return to that place

We are born that same

Return to that place

We are born the same

Return to that place

We are born the same

Return to that place

Oh, my father

Oh, my brother

Oh, my mother

Oh, my sister

Jon Batiste: It's like the rocket ship lifting. This is the early part of the album where [unintelligible 00:30:51] you see Billy Bob and World Music Radio going into this--

[MUSIC - Jon Batiste: Worship]

Oh, my brother

Oh, my father

Oh, my mother, mother

Oh, my father

Oh, my mother (let go!)

Oh, my sister

Oh, my brother (let go!)

Oh, my father

Oh, my sister

Oh, my brother

Oh, my-

[applause]

Jon Batiste: Yes. Yes, man. Wow, wow. This one, just that beginning is-- there's so much, so much there that it's like it's setting the table for all of what's to come not just in the song but for the rest of the album. This one is one of the seminal-- it's one of the pillars of the album. In the first quarter of the album, when you hear this song, after you've heard everything that has led to this moment with the introduction, this is when you've settled into the idea of suspending disbelief and following along with this narrative and watching it unfold. This song is just such an explosion, it's such an experience. Wow.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting, because we all heard you sing beautifully at the beginning, you stripped down, and this has got such a big, heavy, lush production. What was it like for you to have that just super piled on, layered production?

Jon Batiste: I love that, it's like an orchestra except in modern times. If you think about music, the medium and the instrument that you play all have traditions tied to them. We have this new tradition of synthesizers and technological devices that allow for you to do certain things and each tradition comes with its limitations and its advantages. The limitations and advantages of the piano are much different to what you can do with this incredible technology. There's nuance and breath of expression that is singular to each tradition.

For me, it's all just a form of expressing an idea and painting a world because there's no wrong way to express or create or to be in the music. Yes, I loved it. I think there's a way to-- as long as you can be authentic and have spirit and heart undergirding all that, then it's fire.

Alison Stewart: You're hearing highlights from our Listening Party Live event with Jon Batiste in The Greene Space earlier this week for his latest album World Music Radio. After the break, we'll talk to Jon about his new documentary, American Symphony, which follows him as he navigates success alongside his wife's battle with leukemia. He'll also perform a song he wrote as a lullaby for her. Stay with us. This is All Of It.

[music]

Speaker 3: Hello, everybody--

Alison Stewart: You are listening to highlights from our inaugural Listening Party Live event with Jon Batiste in The Greene Space this past Monday. Batiste's latest album, World Music Radio, uses the radio as a concept that allows him to traverse various styles and genres from around the world and it's hosted by an intergalactic DJ, an alter ego named Billy Bob Bo Bob, voiced by Jon himself. First, I had to ask him to shout out his hometown radio station. It's New Orleans WWOZ 90.7, by the way, and then we talked a little more about the origins of that space-traveling disc jockey. Here's more of our conversation.

Jon Batiste: Billy Bob Bo Bob, B4, you done it again.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Why did you know you wanted to be the voice?

Jon Batiste: It was one night I was in the bed, I was working all night, putting the sequence together. Kaleb was down there. We were in the studio. I was working on the stuff. I was like, "Man, ooh. It's coming together. It's like 80%. The vision is there. It's going to come together. Even when it's 100%, they still going to think I'm crazy, but it's fine." I could see it, but I couldn't really understand how to do it. This is before the character came into my subconscious. I went to bed. I was falling asleep. I was in that liminal state of just falling asleep and then the idea hit me.

It really hit me. I don't even know how to explain it. It's like a lightning bolt. A strike of an idea, epiphany moment. I had this vision of the character and the whole world. It was like, "Oh, yes. Wow." Then I went back to the studio and didn't sleep. I sequenced the whole thing. From that first night of the sequence, it almost remained the same for the final album. In one night, it all came clear in all the moments that needed to be filled in, the transitions. The moments where I heard somebody feature, another character in the Billy Bob Bo Bob world.

The most important part was that night, I wrote most of the copy, the script of what he would be doing. Then I sent it to a few people and I was like, "What does this sound like to you? What do you think?" It was so quick. I was like-- a lot of ideas happen like that. Most of them I throw out, but it stuck. It was so important. It was like, "Oh. Ooh, yes." That was it. It hit me.

Alison Stewart: I love radio. I think it's really intimate. I think there's something about it that's really special. What is it that you like about radio and when was the first time you heard yourself on the radio?

Jon Batiste: I love that about radio too. It's like the whole world is listening, but it's really just you. People are trusting the person on the other end to give them something that really is meaningful and handle it with care. That's a very important role. That's an important cultural role. You think about the history of radio around the world as something that still is a universal part of mythology of peoples. You could think about radio in moments in history that happened and you remember the radio broadcast at a moment where people heard the song and it was a soundtrack to a moment in life and it came on the radio, and it's not necessarily that you chose it.

I think this idea of choice can almost become the tyranny of choice. It's like I know I could pick everything I want, I can do all I want. I can just be in my own zone. I don't know about that. I like that about radio.

Alison Stewart: Do you remember when you heard yourself on the radio?

Jon Batiste: I was a kid. I was in WWOZ station and I was performing. I was playing the saxophone and it was me and Trombone Shorty.

Alison Stewart: Nice.

[laughter]

Jon Batiste: We were playing and he was like-- they didn't have a piano in the station, but I had my saxophone. There's somewhere I wanted to get this cut. I don't even remember what year it was, but I played a saxophone solo. It was my first-ever saxophone solo. I was scared to death and I did it on the radio. I remember that vividly. Not because I was on the radio, but because I was completely terrified.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: What was the most challenging thing in making this record, World Music Radio, that really pushed you?

Jon Batiste: I think that making what I wanted to make and making it in a way that was so authentic and true that it just felt like I was doing it just for me because so much of your life and career as an artist is for the public, and that's very true, but when you have these moments where there's great expectation, that can turn into pressure on the creative process, which then makes you forget why you came for. That's not why I came to do that. Ultimately, if you do the thing that you want to do, and it's pure, that's going to reach people anyway. You have to get out of your own way and get out of the way of the creative so it can flow.

Once that started happening, the evidence of that epiphany of Billy Bob Bo Bob and this whole concept coming to me, I never would have thought of that if I was trying to fit into a box or a system or trying to create an album that wasn't authentic to my inclinations and my muse. I'm very, very happy with coming out on the other side of that.

Alison Stewart: Before we go to the final song, I wanted to ask about American Symphony. This film is really beautiful. It started out as one thing. Was it going to be a documentary about Jon creating the symphony, and then in the midst of it, your wife fell ill again. She has leukemia. We follow you through that battle. We follow her in the hospital. We see her with her [unintelligible 00:41:12] We see you curled up on chairs. What did you get out of opening up your life like that?

Jon Batiste: It was a big part of the process of beginning a documentary to begin with, which is to just trust that whatever happens, it's a commitment that you're making for this period of time. However you decide to measure that cycle. For us it was the cycle of creating a piece, this American Symphony, this massive work, and the lead up to the Carnegie Hall premiere of it, which to me seemed like a unit of time that was somewhat fathomable. A month into it, all these things happen. Suleika has this news, and it's the same week as 11th Grammy nominations for the album is announced.

All these things are happening, the highs and lows of life, and the symphony is still going on, and I'm still on television, and I'm doing all these things, and COVID has another wave that comes into the world. All the ideas of what we wanted to do to build the symphony go to the wayside, and we have to stay in New York instead of going around the world and the country even just to find musicians to create a symphony. All of this changes within a month, and you have to decide, "Okay, well, as a family, do we want to continue to honor the commitment of what we decided to do?"

Then that moment felt like it was bigger than us. It felt like it was a calling to continue to share this, so we decided to do that, and it was not always easy, but I think the end result, it's going to be something for everybody who has been through some form of life shift or interruption, a moment where you don't know what's to come. It's a gray area, and you're existing in that space. I believe that that's worthy of me giving up my privacy for seven months.

Alison Stewart: Life comes at you.

Jon Batiste: Yes.

Alison Stewart: It really does, and you're doing well, because both of you were at the end for a little bit of your health and you're doing well, and she's doing well.

Jon Batiste: Yes, my goodness. Yes, we are doing great. Thank you, thank you.

[applause]

Alison Stewart: Okay. You're going to play one more song for us. Is there anything that you haven't been asked about this record that you wanted to say?

Jon Batiste: Oh my gosh.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: I know it's probably a lot, but there's got to be something you've been just wanting to tell people.

Jon Batiste: Yes. I think I should tell people, listen again.

Alison Stewart: Listen [unintelligible 00:44:04] two or three?

Jon Batiste: Yes, listen again. With all due respect, you probably missed something.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: You have been listening to highlights from my conversation with Jon Batiste from earlier this week, and to take us out in the spirit of listening and listening parties, here's Jon with the song from his American Symphony, performed live in The Greene space.

[music]

Jon Batiste: Let's see.

[music]

Jon Batiste: That's the theme for American Symphony.

[music]

Jon Batiste: That's the theme you hear in the symphony. The orchestra plays that. When Suleika was in the hospital, I wrote her these lullabies, and it turned into a song that's on World Music Radio called Butterfly. Let's see.

[MUSIC - Jon Batiste: Butterfly]

Butterfly flying home

But can you fly on your own

Take your place in the world today

Butterfly flying home

Cherry plum and chewing gum

Miniskirts and cause that hum

I see you're driving 'round with your head held high

Butterfly flying home

Stay awhile here with me

Up underneath the stars

When you go, you'll be free

'Cause you know who you are

You're a butterfly

Color scheme from a dream

A tapestry to soul supreme

I mean, I've never seen

Something so damn beautiful, child

It's a butterfly flying home

Alison Stewart: You're listening to Jon Batiste performing the song Butterfly from his latest album, World Music Radio, at our inaugural Listening Party Live event in The Greene Space this past Monday. We want to thank Jon for joining us for an amazing evening and kicking off this series and thanks to everyone who attended or live-streamed the event. Thank you also to The Greene Space team for hosting and putting the event together and thanks to the members of team All Of It who worked on it including Simon Close who produced and directed the event and edited this hour.

That is All Of It for today. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here tomorrow.

[MUSIC - Jon Batiste: Butterfly]

You see I'm howling at the moon

Day and night, ah-woo-hoo

They say I'm as crazy as a loon

But I'm all right all dressed in white

 

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