3a:T511,This week, Inside the Hive welcomes special guest Jon Batiste, leader of the Stay Human Band on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Hot off his Golden Globe win for his work on the score of Pixar’s Soul, Batiste's latest album, We Are, represents a vivid turn from straight jazz into a joyful, danceable pop and neo-soul. It's also a bold declaration of conscience: catalyzed by the Black Lives Matter movement of last summer, when he rallied protestors with an ad hoc street band, Batiste wanted to deliver a personal statement on his own experience as a Black man in America. “We have to hold ourselves accountable to the things that we profess to believe,” he says. Batiste collaborated with 200 musicians, producers, and friends, including Quincy Jones, Mavis Staples, and even author Zadie Smith, with whom he held regular singing sessions over Zoom at the height of the pandemic. Here he recounts his own musical evolution, from Louisiana, where he grew up in a storied musical family, to New York, where he studied jazz piano at Juilliard and later developed what he’s come to call “social music,” a sound that draws on, in addition to New Orleans jazz, Duke Ellington, Stevie Wonder, Wu Tang Clan and even Bjork to find a common humanity in a time of division.3b:T419,

Singer, songwriter, composer, and genuine music lover Jon Batiste serenades us with his harmonica-keyboard while reminiscing on the sounds of his childhood kitchen in New Orleans. He describes what it was like to grow up in a big, musical family of jazz legends, and shares some of their favorite Christmas traditions—including competing to see who could make the best and truest gumbo.

Jon Batiste is a multiple Oscar and Grammy award-winning musician and TV personality. He was the bandleader and musical director for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from 2015 to 2022. He also received multiple awards for his work on Pixar’s Soul. He is the subject of a new documentary, American Symphony.

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John Sinclair