Jon Batiste: The Joy Machine from Kenner

Jonathan Michael Batiste is joy in human form. Born in 1986 in Kenner and raised in a New Orleans musical dynasty—the Batiste family has been making music in the city for generations—Jon Batiste has become one of the most celebrated musicians in the world. He won five Grammy Awards in 2022 including Album of the Year for We Are, composed the Oscar-winning score for the Pixar film Soul, and served as bandleader on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for seven years. Through it all, he has remained the most joyful, generous, and unapologetically New Orleans musician on the planet.

The Batiste Family

The Batistes are one of the great musical families of New Orleans. Jon’s great-uncle David Batiste led the Batiste Brothers Band, a fixture of the New Orleans R&B scene for decades. Cousins, uncles, and siblings all play. Jon began performing with the family band at age eight, sitting in on percussion before switching to piano. He attended St. Augustine High School in Tremé—the legendary Marching 100’s home base—and then the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, following in the footsteps of Wynton Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr. He went on to Juilliard, where he arrived as a teenager and quickly established himself as one of the most gifted pianists of his generation.

The Career

Batiste’s career has been a kaleidoscope. His band, Stay Human, has been performing since his Juilliard days, blending jazz, R&B, funk, gospel, and pop in a sound that is impossible to categorize and impossible to resist. His appointment as bandleader on The Late Show in 2015 introduced him to millions of viewers nightly. But it was the one-two punch of the Soul soundtrack in 2020 and We Are in 2021 that elevated him to global stardom. We Are’s sweep at the Grammys—including wins over Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, and Taylor Swift—was one of the most surprising and celebrated outcomes in recent Grammy history.

The New Orleans Way

What makes Batiste special is not just his virtuosity but his philosophy. He calls his approach “social music”—the idea that music is not a performance to be observed but an experience to be shared. He leads impromptu parades through the streets of New York, hands out instruments to strangers, and turns every concert into a celebration. This is pure New Orleans—the second-line spirit, the brass band ethos, the belief that music belongs to everyone and that the line between performer and audience should be as thin as possible.

Still Home

Despite his global fame, Batiste returns to New Orleans constantly. He plays Jazz Fest, pops up at local clubs, and maintains deep ties to the musical community that raised him. When he won Album of the Year, the city celebrated as if it had won something too—because it had. Jon Batiste is what New Orleans sounds like when it leaves home and conquers the world without ever forgetting where it came from.