JON BATISTE IS LEANING INTO JOY

AFTER SWEEPING THE GRAMMYS IN 2022, THE MUSICIAN IS BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS AND INSPIRING THE NEXT GENERATION ALL WHILE HOLDING ON TO HIS ZEST FOR LIFE 

- RACHEL DESANTIS

Jon Batiste takes his peace and quiet very seriously. When it comes to selfcare, “I love anything that involves being able to sit in silence, whether it’s in a cabin, on the beach, in the mountains,” the musician tells People over the phone en route to a headlining set at the Newport Folk Festival. “It’s one of my favorite pastimes.”

It’s understandable why Batiste— a dynamic performer celebrated for blending jazz, funk, soul and R&B into a genre all its own—needs to tune out the noise at times. To say he’s had a busy few years would be an understatement: In 2021 he won the Best Original Score Oscar for his work on the Disney-Pixar movie Soul. Then last year he won five Grammy Awards for his LP We Are (including the coveted Album of the Year prize, beating out Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish) and stepped away from The Late Show With Stephen Colbert after a seven-year run as bandleader—all while supporting his wife, Suleika Jaouad, amid a cancer recurrence. “I’ve had so many different things on my plate. There were a lot of great things that happened, between the musical discoveries and the career milestones, and then also a lot of heavy things happened,” says Batiste, 36, whose highs and lows inform his new record World Music Radio, out Aug. 18. “Positivity and joy doesn’t come to you. You have to go to it.”