American - Musician | November 11, 1986 -
Imagine if you grew up in a place where your lineage was there for a hundred years, and part of the culture was to play music 50 percent of the time. You'd probably have a lot of musicians in your family too.
Jon Batiste
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I'm from New Orleans, which is all about direct engagement out in the street with all the parades and Mardi Gras Indians and jazz funerals. I'm trying to take that and put it into my generation, a group that doesn't have enough joy and celebration in their lives.
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The Batiste family is a large musical family in Louisiana, out in New Orleans. People go to New Orleans, and if they go to any club, four days out of the week I guarantee you that you will find a Batiste playing in the ensemble.
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I have seven uncles, and my dad played bass, they had a band together, that was the family band. And of course as the cousins got older, including myself, we joined a family band. All the cousins played. That's my heritage.
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Whatever I do with music, I try to make it align deeply with the values and principles of who I am and what I believe the purpose of my life is.
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There's a tradition - in New Orleans it still exists - where people play in the street. People play outside of the venues. Food, music, and that cultural exchange, it happens anywhere.
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We played Carnegie Hall, and that was one time where I felt... Carnegie Hall as a legendary, very venerable place to perform. I'd never heard of anyone going into the Hall and kind of standing on the seats and playing throughout the aisles and having the audience stand on the seats. So when we did that in 2013, even for me it was a shock.
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There were so many people after that first 'Colbert Report' interview that were impressed by the synergy we had during the interview. People everywhere we'd go would say, 'You should be the bandleader; it would be great for jazz. It would be great for the music.' But I was completely against it.
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It's not like the old competition that you had between Leno and Letterman. It's a friendly competition between Fallon and Stephen.
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The music is really about sharing an experience. That's why we call it Stay Human. It's like we're sharing this genuine human exchange.
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My whole way of looking at entertainment and audience engagement - and my ability to go from one genre to another - comes from my experience in New Orleans.
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On the road, you can't really develop a personal life.
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