Enlarge image
Jon Batiste at the Homecoming Concert in New York's Central Park
Photo: John Angelillo / imago images / UPI Photo
Justin Bieber is there, Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett.
But no one has been nominated for an award at the 64th Grammy Awards as often as Jon Batiste.
With eleven nominations, the jazz musician has a good chance of winning the most important US music award for the first time at the award ceremony on January 31.
The fact that the pianist Batiste has been nominated for a Grammy in so many categories - there are 86 in total - is only surprising at first glance.
For a long time he has been a kind of master of ceremonies for the masses, especially for People of Color, who dance and preach love, freedom and justice.
"Love riots" is what Batiste calls these musical marches, which have been his trademark for many years.
For example, when he grabs the melodic at concerts and walks through the hall with his band Stay Human, his fans dance behind the musicians as if they were the second line of a brass band parade in Batiste's home in New Orleans.
Jazz as a protest
In the past pandemic year, Batiste moved his concerts online and outdoors.
With a keyboard over his shoulder, megaphone in hand and band colleagues in tow, he brought thousands of people together for jam session-like protest marches.
Civil rights anthems such as "We Shall Overcome" and "Down By the Riverside" echoed through the streets of New York, where police officers had used violence against demonstrators the day before.
"Music as catharsis and liberation" is what Batiste calls it, it has binding and healing power for him, which can transform fear, anger or sadness into collective joy.
"I see jazz as a superpower," he recently told the Guardian.
It is an honor for him to be able to play this music.
Because: "It's my legacy - it's the blackest, deepest American classical music that has become a universal art form."
Trailblazer and TV star
Jonathan Michael Batiste was born in 1986 in Kenner, a suburb of New Orleans, into a family of spiritual musicians.
He later moved to New York to study jazz at the renowned Juilliard School.
He has been known to a wider audience since 2015 as the band leader and back-and-forth sidekick of US late-talker Stephen Colbert.
He is also the creative director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem.
Together with Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor, he wrote the Oscar-winning soundtrack for the award-winning animation film »Soul«, a swinging musical about jazz pianist Joe Gardner - by the way, the first black main character in a Pixar film.
When he appeared at the Tiny Desk Concerts, one of the most popular concert series on the Internet, he only played with female musicians.
He is currently working on an instrumental monument, the "American Symphony", which he intends to premiere next May in the famous Carnegie Hall - with a 200-person orchestra made up exclusively of musicians of color.
This makes Batiste the perfect candidate for the US Recording Academy, which was recently confronted with allegations of a lack of diversity and transparency.
Bring jazz into the present
The musician was nominated a total of three times in 2018 and 2020, albeit in more remote categories such as "Best contemporary instrumental album".
Now he is also a candidate for the supposedly highest orders.
Batiste got eight of his eleven nominations for “We Are”, including “Best Album”.
Here he competes against pop prince Bieber (»Justice«), the former Disney star Olivia Rodrigo (»Sour«) and rapper Doja Cat (»Planet Her«).
Batiste's »Freedom« is also nominated as best single, the video that Batiste recorded in the streets of his childhood as best video.
Thanks to the soundtrack for »Soul«, he can figure out further chances.
"We Are" is Batiste's fifth studio album - and the jazzer's first fusion work.
It's a mix of R'n'B, funk, blues, soul, hip-hop, gospel, afrobeat - a journey through the history of handmade black music.
And his own development.
"I've always tried to show that the genres are all connected, just as people in all our lineages are connected," Batiste told the New York Times after the nominations were announced: "I've said that many times and it's a great feeling when it's recognized on the greatest stage in music. "
sak