We are HUMAN
Photo courtesy of Universal Music Group
The press conference I attended with Jon Batiste was the first press conference I’d ever attended. So, admittedly, I was a little nervous. In preparation for this monumental occasion, I found myself listening to Jon Batiste’s rendition of “It’s All Right”, to remind myself that, well, it’s all right. And there is no doubt in my mind that Batiste’s incredible music has spoken to countless other people.
Jon Batiste’s latest album’s cover, WE ARE.
Photo: Universal Music Group
Jon Batiste’s album WE ARE was released on March 19, 2021. Music platforms may describe it as R&B/Soul, but Batiste describes it as “genreless… it’s like a Black-pop-masterpiece work.” It’s uncategorizable. “It’s a novel. And if you close your eyes, it’s a movie. And it’s meant to be listened to like a novel you don’t skip the chapters of, a movie you don’t even skip [a] scene [of or you won’t] even know what happened.” This album, this novel, this movie is Jon Batiste’s way of bringing us together. He’s using his talent in music to, in his words, “shine a light on the divine nature of humanity.” And we need to be open to perceiving that light.
WE ARE is a collaboration between Jon Batiste and St. Augustine Marching 100, Quincy Jones, Mavis Staples, Zadie Smith, Batiste’s grandfather David Gauthier, Batiste’s father Michael Batiste, and many other souls. In the album, you’ll find rap, you’ll find piano, you’ll find 20 seconds of esteemed gospel singer and civil rights activist Mavis Staples speaking. There are 13 songs in WE ARE, like chapters of a book. And if you listen closely, you’ll be able to find connections between the songs. In the final seconds of the fanfare that is the first song in the album, also titled WE ARE, you’ll hear a reference to TELL THE TRUTH, the next song in the album. You’ll hear a whisper of WHATCHUTALKINBOUT in ADULTHOOD. In listening to Mavis Staples speak, you’ll hear about FREEDOM. And you’ll find I NEED YOU in SHOW ME THE WAY. At the end of the album, you’ll reach UNTIL, a very heartwarming piece of music, where, amid the singing of “Shoo Fly” by New Orleans Indians, you’ll hear a small child, in a tone reminiscent of youth, say, “Let’s go home now.” The entirety of the album WE ARE is a love letter to humankind, and Jon Batiste is inviting us to listen.
Joe Gardner, the main character of Pixar’s Soul, piano playing and “jazzing” is based off of Jon Batiste’s mannerisms.
Photo: Pixar
If you don’t know him from his new album, or from his work as bandleader and musical director of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, you may know Jon Batiste as the composer of the original jazz music in Pixar’s Soul. Pixar released its first black lead film in 2020, and millions of people (including me) loved watching Joe Gardner go on a life-changing adventure. And the scenes where Joe Gardner is sitting at a piano, jazzing, are simply breathtaking. Jon Batiste served as the reference for Joe Gardner, in more ways than one. Not only was Batiste filmed while recording the music for Soul, so that animators could accurately portray Joe Gardner’s playing, but that first scene of the film, the one that is so pivotal, meant to capture the audience’s attention, had dialogue written by Jon Batiste himself. We see Joe sit down at the piano in that opening scene in front of his middle school band class, and he gets lost in the music, talking about these chords, and the minor… and Jon Batiste remembers when he first saw that opening scene, he started crying, because the dialogue for that was improvised—he had no idea it would be in the film. And when he saw Joe playing and the words he was saying, Batiste remembers thinking, “That’s... so me!” Millions of people caught a glimpse of Jon Batiste in that film, whether they know it or not.
Pixar’s Soul was something Batiste knew “would influence a lot of people and their understanding of jazz and the sacred lineage of jazz music.” And so he gave himself to it, building on that quality of music that he describes as communal, capable of “mak[ing] people feel the same emotion, at the same time.” He “wanted to find chord structures and melodies that felt grounded in earth in the New York world of jazz and all that [he] experienced as a teenager growing up and getting into the jazz scene.” The music Batiste composed for Soul was his way of teaching the film’s audience about Black culture. To him, “spiritually, [there’s] a calling for Black culture and the people in our ancestral group, to give this to the world. [Black genius] is a superpower, so it’s going to be undeniable for all time, whether people are ignorant about it or not.”
There’s a lot we can learn from each other, and there’s a lot I learned simply from listening to Jon Batiste. Like how, despite how captivating and toe-tapping his music is, Jon Batiste will not claim to be born to play music. His talent in music is undeniable, but the way he views it, “our talents are just a means for us to love each other and point people to God, and give people a window into what’s after all of this. A window into the thing that’s to come, that’s actually bigger and better.” And the way I interpreted this was, to quote the first song, titled WE ARE, of his eponymous album: we’re never alone. We are not meant to be alone. The gifts we are given are our tools for loving one another, for truly understanding each other. We all can stand by one another to become a higher version of ourselves, and it’s only through the connections we make with each other, with humankind, that we will reach our fullest potential. That we will make a lasting impact.
That’s part of the wonder of being human. And I think that’s some of what Jon Batiste wants to convey as the leader of a band named Stay Human. But there’s also the part of being human that includes our ability to change. Jon Batiste admitted to how he “was a very introverted, shy kid. Some people say [he] didn’t speak until [he] was ten.” And you would think (or at least, I thought) that someone as outspoken and advocative as Jon Batiste would have been just as lively when he was young. But, Batiste said, he loves how “you can go through seasons in your life, phases in your life. Where you are now is not where you will be, is not where you could be. That’s a very important thing for young people who are up-and-coming to realize. You have this moment in your life, and that’s what you have. The moment: this is your time right now. And the decisions you make today will determine your future. And your future doesn’t have to be what the reality of the present is.” And those words hit me close to home. Because I used to always hold an expectation over myself, like bait on a hook with me as the fish. I, though not explicitly, believed in fate, and I believed I was a certain type of person who would have a certain type of fate. But I’ve come to learn that that’s wrong. Every person is a tiny, compact universe, capable of unimaginable consequences. Who’s to say what one person can do? The winds of change make us unpredictable, and even we cannot predict who we will be. All we have is the present. (And that’s a little frightening, but it’s also unequivocally human.)
If you listen to Jon Batiste’s new album WE ARE, if you take his advice and “listen to it in one sitting… [and are] open to it, [he] really [does] believe you will leave feeling very full, every time you just listen to it. It’s almost like—it’s like a 45-minute meditation that you could take every day.” Just like a novel you’d crack open while sitting in your favorite armchair, WE ARE takes you on a journey. It has its emotional, heavy moments, which transition into high, heroic victories, and when you listen to the final chapter, you’ll get that feeling of satisfaction that accompanies the end of a book. Batiste describes it like a collection of stories, with songs where he’s rapping, and then, with the music video for I NEED YOU, he’s doing a Lindy Hop dance, which is like Harlem 1930s dance, mixed with modern dance. And then CRY is like a folk song, hearkening to Black farm families in the South.
Screen capture from Jon Batiste’s I NEED YOU music video
Photo courtesy of Universal Music Group
Batiste’s own story is in the middle of it. There you’ll be able to listen to how the South shaped how Batiste views the world. How Louisiana in particular, and how it is so “culturally different to many other places in the world,” with specific types of food, and traditions, and architecture influenced by the Spanish, the French, and “you got the African influence all over”—all culminate to create a unique perspective in a young person. Because “you have all of these different ways that, subconsciously, you are being taught to appreciate culture and appreciate tradition and appreciate community. And then you start to think about life in a certain way even before you can verbalize what that is.”
In WE ARE, you’ll be able to listen to Jon Batiste’s journey, how he’s still on the journey, and how he got to where he is by just following his curiosity. He grew up in New Orleans, a very musical city, in a family filled with musicians, with his father playing bass in the house. And then he moved to New York when he was 17, and he studied at Julliard and was exposed to a whole range of music. He told us, “I never was someone who thought, I’m gonna go be a musician. I just was pursuing things that inspired me.” And that chase for inspiration was what led him from New Orleans to New York to his band and then touring the world and then being on TV, and “it’s just continuing to build on itself.”
In WE ARE, you’ll be able to listen to how staying human has taken Jon Batiste down the path of social activism. He told us, “I just try to be the best version of myself and it creates opportunities for activism, it creates opportunities for creating music, it creates opportunities for everything in between. And that’s it. It’s all one.”
We all feel a little lost sometimes, but maybe WE ARE will be the thing to help you find your way for the day. I think Jon Batiste released this album in the hopes that it could do that for us. He tells us: “WE ARE is… 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 it’s the answer. We are? We are. That’s it.”
