When this 12 months's Grammy nominations have been introduced, Jon Batiste heard his identify 11 occasions – probably the most of any artist this 12 months. Eight nominations have been for his album "We Are," and three for his work on the soundtrack of the film "Soul."
Correspondent Jim Axelrod mentioned, "They simply saved calling your identify."
"I used to be actually floored each single time," Batiste mentioned.
"We Are" demonstrates this extraordinary vary, from his funky New Orleans roots, heard on the monitor "Freedom," that dare you to not dance:
… to the classical-jazz hybrid "Motion 11."
Axelrod requested, "You mentioned, 'God gave us 12 notes.' What did you do with these 12 notes on these two albums that's chargeable for such acclaim?"
"I've all the time thought that you've got a sound, and sound represents one thing," Batiste mentioned. "The music is all the time chatting with you. For those who're listening, it is telling you what to do. Not, 'What did I do with it?' It is, 'What did it inform me to do?'"
Greatest-known for his day job, the bandleader on "The Late Present with Stephen Colbert," Batiste is nobody's wingman now. That is his second. "What a 12 months!" mentioned Axelrod.
"Sure certainly! Amen!"
However if you happen to're pondering issues could not be any higher for Batiste, do not. "One factor that I've discovered from this time is, it will probably all go away," he mentioned. "Issues can change in a short time. From in the future to the subsequent, your world will be turned upside-down."
Eight days earlier than the nominations, on the eve of his thirty fifth birthday, the love of his life, creator Suleika Jaouad, acquired sucker-punched.
"Sunday Morning" first met Jaouad final 12 months as she was launching her bestseller "Between Two Kingdoms," a sensible and shifting meditation on therapeutic from the leukemia that interrupted her life in her 20s.
In February 2021 Axelrod requested Jaouad, "Are you healed?"
"To say that I am healed, can be to suggest that there is an endpoint," she replied.
How prophetic that turned out to be.
Requested at the moment how she is, Jaouad mentioned, "So much has modified in a 12 months. Not solely was my leukemia again, however it was way more aggressive than it had been a decade in the past."
The largest day of Batiste's skilled life final fall was Jaouad's first day of chemo in her second battle with most cancers.
"We're sitting on this chemo suite collectively," she mentioned, "and these cellphone calls of congratulation are coming in. And we're having to carry these two realities."
Their world was shaking, however Batiste and Jaouad have been decided to search out their stability.
"It is holding the completely, you recognize, gutting, heartbreaking, painful issues and the gorgeous, soulful issues in the identical palm of 1 hand," mentioned Jaouad. "And it is onerous to try this, however it's a must to try this, as a result of in any other case the grief takes over."
Which brings us to this previous February, and their thought of the right way to greatest meet their harrowing actuality.
"We're married," Jaouad laughed. "We have been secret married till this second. We had this tiny, stunning, little ceremony. We did not have marriage ceremony bands; we used bread ties."
WEB EXCLUSIVE: Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad on their secret marriage ceremony
Collectively for eight years, the night time earlier than her bone marrow transplant struck them as the right time to make it official.
Batiste mentioned, "OK, this has occurred, however this is not gonna interrupt the plan that we've. That is only a bump within the highway."
"And one thing like getting married will be an act of optimism, an act of declaration, an act of, 'We have now a future,'" mentioned Axelrod.
"Sure. It is an act of defiance. The darkness will attempt to overtake you, however simply activate the sunshine. Give attention to the sunshine. Maintain onto the sunshine."
WEB EXCLUSIVE: Suleika Jaouad on the significance of a bone marrow registry
However married or not, Omicron meant Batiste could not stick with Jaouad after the transplant. She was alone, with solely her concern to maintain her firm.
She mentioned, "The quiet moments of, type of hole struggling within the hospital the place you out of the blue sit with your self and also you sit with what's occurring to you – "
"Utter isolation?"
"Utter isolation. And I expressed one thing to that impact to Jon. And subsequent factor I do know, I see him hunched over his laptop. And half an hour later, he begins taking part in this lullaby. And each single day after that, he wrote me a brand new lullaby. And it felt like he was proper there sleeping by my bedside."
Batiste mentioned, "They'd a therapeutic property to the music."
"That you just wrote only for her, to offer help and energy?" requested Axelrod.
"Sure, completely. And to fill the room with these therapeutic properties. For me, that is my method. All people can have their method, you recognize, however search that. Meditate on that. Give attention to these issues. Discover these issues."
They're now each discovering these issues – confronting the worst by counting on their greatest.
"Discovering some type of artistic expression to precise what feels inconceivable to precise, to precise the unendurable, has been so vital," mentioned Jaouad.
Her focus is on the intense (portray self-portraits depicting her remedy), and the whimsical (bedazzling the walker she now makes use of on the age of 33). "So now, as a substitute of this walker and feeling a way of dread, it kinda makes me blissful," she mentioned.
As for Batiste, subsequent month at Carnegie Corridor he debuts "American Symphony," his work reflecting the stress between America's beliefs and its realities – our vivid day, and darkish, darkish night time.
"The night time, it evokes a chant-like high quality," he mentioned, adopted by the day, "that sense of triumph, conquer adversity."
A theme that captures the total sweep of Jon Batiste's and Suleika Jaouad's lives proper now, that rotation between triumph and adversity.
"And that is what you are residing proper now," mentioned Axelrod, "the brightness of this skilled, all of those achievements, and the darkness of the wrestle?"
"Yeah," mentioned Batiste. "That is life, man. That is it. Strap in!"
READ AN EXCERPT: "Between Two Kingdoms" by Suleika Jaouad
You'll be able to stream Jon Batiste's album "We Are" by clicking on the embed beneath (Free Spotify registration required to listen to the tracks in full):
For more information:
- jonbatiste.com
- "We Are" by Jon Batiste (Verve Information)
- "American Symphony" by Jon Batiste, premiering Might 7 at Carnegie Corridor, New York
- Comply with Jon Batiste on Twitter, Instagram, Fb and YouTube
- suleikajaouad.com
- "Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted" by Suleika Jaouad (Random Home), in Hardcover, Commerce Paperback, eBook and Audio codecs, out there through Amazon and Indiebound
- Suleika Jaouad's "Life, Interrupted" columns in The New York Instances
- Comply with Suleika Jaouad on Twitter, Fb and Instagram
Story produced by Jay Kernis. Editor: Mike Levine.
Watch the sixty fourth Annual Grammy Awards stay on CBS and Paramount+ Sunday, April 3 starting at 8 p.m. ET./5 p.m. PT.