Jon Batisteのインタビュー
Welcome to Kevin's English Room Podcast!
Hello!
Okay, so on this episode, you're going to be seeing the interview of Jon Batiste.
Yes, Batiste.
And it's going to be separated in two parts.
Zenhan is going to be on the normal one.
Kohan is going to be on the Amazon Music exclusive.
Okay.
So, I'm just letting you know.
Please enjoy the interview.
Yes!
Welcome to Kevin's English Room Podcast!
Hello, guys!
Wow!
今何時ですか?
Did you learn that?
Yeah, baby!
By coming here?
What time is it?
Wow!
You're a very special guest here today.
Jon Batiste, thank you.
Thank you for being here.
Wow, goodness.
Thank you for having me.
Wow, wow, wow.
You know, he's been my friend for a very long time.
Yes, yes.
I have never seen him this nervous.
Yeah, actually.
We're meant to get.
He's a very big fan of you.
He even brought all his records that he has.
Show it to him.
Show it to him.
You got the records.
He got the records.
He brought them here.
Let's get the records out.
Wow!
Always wanted to do that.
Yeah!
Oh!
Wow!
Yeah.
And that's like a Freedom and I Need You album.
Of course.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
And this one.
Oh, yeah.
I love it.
Yes.
This is incredible.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wow.
Thank you so much.
I'm so glad to meet you.
I'm glad to be here.
This is cool, y'all.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
And in English.
This is really great.
I've been trying to.
I've been learning as much of the language.
Japanese is so beautiful.
I love it.
Oh, thank you.
First time here?
First time here in Japan?
I came to Japan once in 2009 for one day.
Uh-huh.
One day?
One day, man.
For like transit or something?
No, it was a performance.
It was like a really a day and a half.
We performed and we left and we were on tour.
So, you know, when you're touring, it's in and out.
You don't really get to visit.
Yeah.
You don't get to see things.
You don't get to meet people as much in your occupation.
You have focus.
So this trip was really great because it was my first concert for me to perform.
Yeah.
Jean-Baptiste.
And also, you know, my real first visit.
Right, right, right.
Really understanding where.
Yeah, yeah, true.
I went to your concert on Friday.
Yeah.
I had bought your ticket even before we were announced that you might have theater.
Right.
Yeah, of course.
That was great.
That was great.
That was great.
Thank you.
Man, I love the show.
The moment when we were in the crowd and dancing and everybody was there.
And there was a boy who was like maybe 10 years old.
Wow.
And he was there and he started to dance with me and I was dancing.
And then there was a woman who came up and we formed like a dance circle.
We're jumping in the middle of the circle.
And then I went back on stage and I was playing all the different instruments and singing.
It was just such a celebration.
I love being here.
It's really fun.
Yeah.
Do you feel like a different vibe?
Like when you compare the audience from Japan to versus like the United States or any other
country?
Definitely.
I think that every place that I visited has a different energy with the audience.
Japan has a very distinct audience performer relationship from my experience.
I love it.
Personally, it's one of my favorites.
I feel this is the beginning of a great relationship.
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
Yama-chan has a huge list of questions.
Yeah.
But I'm not a professional interviewer or something like that.
I'm just a listener of your music.
Do your thing.
You transmit.
We're on the radio.
Hello, it's Billy Bob Hope.
Yes.
So first of all, I heard that I'm sorry for the loss.
Yes.
So I really understand that you really need to go back to your hometown as soon as possible.
Thank you so much for having time like this.
Thank you for being here.
This is my last day here of a wonderful trip.
And on this trip, my cousin was also, he was like an uncle to me.
He babysat me.
He taught me music for many years.
His name is David Russell-Baptiste.
Russell, the young lion is known as the young lion.
Russell-Baptiste is a drummer, composer.
He was so special.
And his memorial is this week in New Orleans.
So he's not a person who recorded a lot of music, but he's almost a mythological figure.
And his legacy is just grown and grown even since he's passed.
It's amazing the stories you'll hear.
Wow.
So thank you so much for having time and do this show.
We're very happy.
ジョン·バティステさんとの素晴らしい演奏体験
I was so grateful to come to Japan and perform and be a part of all these incredible
things on the schedule.
They would come here when I was a kid, my dad and my uncles and Russell.
They would tour in Kobe, Japan.
They had a very good relationship with a promoter at Kobe, Japan.
So they would be there.
And that was in the 90s.
So it's like a full circle moment.
Okay.
So I have a whole bunch of questions.
Let's do it.
Let's hit it.
Let's go.
Yeah.
So let's talk about your show first.
Show on Friday, which was absolutely amazing.
I had a great time.
Thank you.
I'm glad you came.
So in the behind the scene interview from the movie Soul, you said transcending quality
to his, which means Joe Gardner, play because he goes into the zone that sends over other
world that only a few musicians have the pleasure of going to, or like, you can tell
where, when you play something and you hear people gasp and go like, oh, wow, you can
feel that energy.
And that's not just about what you're playing, but just how you vibe with it.
And you were just like that.
We were like, everybody was like.
And man, thank you.
I'm so, so happy to see the reaction from the audience here.
There's a zone that musicians go into and you go there and the audience, when they follow
you into that zone, special things can happen.
Very special moments can happen.
That's when you go into another state of being and collectively, everyone becomes one.
Everyone finds the same frequency and starts to become a community, whether we know each
other or not, it's the most beautiful thing.
So I'm very grateful to be able to create that from my instrument and for the audience
to want to come along.
That's a blessing.
Yeah, you jumped into the crowd and I did a marching kind of, you play that pianica,
melodica, yeah, in the audience.
And we were like, just like you say, we were like circle and it was like kind of festival.
Like we have Matsuri in Japan, that's like a traditional festival, but that was just
like that.
And yeah, I felt something special from that.
Oh my goodness.
Yeah, truly.
Yeah.
So what I'm surprised a bit about, oh, yeah, I think I'm already used to this, my phone.
Yeah, that's my ringer.
So what I'm surprised the most was about, I thought you brought like full band set or
something, but you brought like a drummer and percussionist who were absolutely great.
They were great.
Yeah.
But is that how you've been traveling recently?
Recently, I have traveled in that configuration.
Joe Sailor is the drummer.
We've been playing together since we were kids, since we were in high school.
I met him in high school and formed a band when I was 17.
And Nega Santos from Brazil is playing the percussion.
バンドメンバーとの演奏と音楽の本質
And we've played together now for nine years, almost 10 years.
Almost 10 years.
So the drum and the voice is all you need to create music.
There's many different types of entertainment and there's many different types of performers.
And that's great to have lights and pyrotechnics, a show and production and all these things.
But I like to be able to do that and also do a strip down just the voice and the drum.
The most ancient form of music making, just going back to the most human and most natural
expression.
And if you can make something happen like that, like when we're in the crowd, it was
just the drums, hand claps.
Sing along together.
Singing the songs from the album, you sing world music radio with the production and
the lights on the stage.
And then you break it down and you go into the crowd and you bring people back onto the
stage and you may bring people out.
Sometimes we'll go outside and form a processional.
And this is the beauty of music.
It's not just entertainment.
It almost becomes ritual.
It becomes like a spiritual practice.
音楽の単純さと奥深さ
Yeah, we sing along together and that melody was quite a simple, right?
Oh my gosh, from the song Worship.
Worship has that melody that at the end, it's like a chant almost, nursery rhyme.
Is that something you intentionally did?
Intentionally did when you make a song because you are very professional at jazz chords and
those things.
Make it simple so that we can sing, we can easily understand.
Yes.
How do you make music that has sophistication and has depth and is profound?
But also the child or the elder and everybody in between can sing it and catch the melody,
catch the meaning.
That's what I like to do.
アーティストとのコラボレーション
Right, I felt it.
Yes.
It's also great to have wonderful collaborators and people in the band, like the musicians
you saw on this record, working with people who are able to know how to play everything.
Classical music, jazz, gospel, folk, blues, any style of music, but then can just be very
specific and selective about what the song needs, what the production needs, and really
zero in.
I have a question.
I've heard in one of your interviews talking about countries, the popular music, like the
songs in the United States, songs in Europe, and all the other songs are the otherficationized
songs, right?
And then in the latest album, World Music Radio, you wanted to kind of, you know, kind
of put a spotlight on all the other cultures and all the countries, right?
And you collabed with all these other artists like Lana Del Rey or Lil Wayne or New Jeans.
How, what was the thought process behind collaborating with those artists?
Yeah, I love these artists in different forms, but I thought this album, to me, is a movie.
It's like a movie that you're watching with your mind's eye.
You're listening, and from the beginning to the end, it's the sequence of a narrative
unfolding.
And there are different moments, many moments where a character has to emerge to move the
narrative forward.
And sometimes you know who it is right away.
Maybe it's one or two people who can play the role effectively, and you have to find
that person.
Sometimes you have to discover that person.
A lot of the artists on this album that are featured are people who I know, and some of
it happened organically.
It wasn't even the plan.
It was a discovery.
You know, I'm a very organic creative.
I'm not thinking about how to make something with this person in mind first, and then we
go into the studio and we make it.
It's typically I'm making the thing, and it leads me to, oh, ah, Lil Wayne.
This is what needs to happen for us to get John Bellion, who I collaborated with on this
アルバムの制作過程
album, for much of it.
We were working on Uneasy, for instance, and then it got to the point where at the end,
it needed to have another perspective, because my perspective was this philosopher, this
street philosopher, observing what's going on in the neighborhood and the streets and
in the urban environment.
Left and the right, we're talking two different stories.
Strong in this life, but I still tuck my chain.
City feels uneasy.
That's all happening.
Then we wanted to flip the script and have someone who represented that environment speak
to their experience living through it.
So there's the observing, and then there's the real personification of the thing itself.
That was an example for one song.
So now I take every song, and there's always these discoveries or these visions or epiphanies.
Sometimes it isn't even so logical, it'll hit me in a dream.
The vision for this album hit me in a dream.
This narrative, and Billy Bob, Bull Bob, and these headphones, and the world of world music
radio and the radio station, this sort of transmitting device, and all of the characters
in the world music radio world, it hit me at the 11th hour.
We were a month away from finishing the project.
It was 80% there, and it wasn't quite where I wanted it to be.
When you listen to the album, it's really something how it all moves together.
I really encourage listening to it like you would watch a film.
So it wasn't really packaged like that until the last minute?
No.
It was sequenced in a way where the prompt was world music and not the genre of world music.
This is an example of why that title, and any genre title, is erroneous.
It's a negative thing to box any art in.
It's always after the fact that you name the art.
So this was more about how do you make a radio broadcast that comes from the planet Earth,
the world, the whole world, collectively, not world music, the terminology of exotic music from
outside of America, which is crazy, but the whole world coming together to create a sound
for the whole universe.
So if the whole world listened to a radio broadcast, and it was all throughout the universe,
and the aliens and extraterrestrials, the space shuttles all were tuning into it,
what would it sound like?
Who would be on it?
Billy Bob Bob would be our DJ, and how would that experience unfold?
All of that framed the album, and then that night when I had this epiphany,
I sequenced the record.
アルバムのテーマ
And then it was just a matter of plugging in the last steps to really make it come to life.
Go ahead, man.
Yeah, okay, okay.
Well, I have a bunch of questions, so...
Go for it, real fast, rapid fire.
Try to get to all your questions.
Okay, okay.
So, all right, we're gonna have to cut you off right there.
It's just me and Yamachan right now.
The Zenhan Kouhan, the show's gonna be Zenhan Kouhan, that was the Zenhan,
and Kouhan is gonna be on Amazon, Amazon Music exclusive.
So if you want to check out the rest of the interview, please go to Amazon Music.
All right, thank you.
