Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast - Jon Batiste

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

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 thebest 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For those who don't understand, a lot of people think they've had gumbo and they have gumbo. A lot of people call stuff gumbo. That's not gumbo, but for those who know when you have gumbo and you're making the gumbo happen, it's very meticulous. Welcome to your Mama's Kitchen, the podcast that explores how we're shaped as adults by the kitchens we grew up in as kids. I'm Michele Norris.

Today's guest is a musical wonder, multiple Grammy award-winning singer, songwriter, and composer, John Batiste. And it's no surprise that our conversation quickly turned to gumbo, that hot, steaming bowl of deliciousness that New Orleans is known for. John is one of the city's favorite sons, and Gumbo is an apt metaphor for his songwriting and his attitude toward life. Everything he does, from his music to his fashion, to the way he moves through the world, embodies a medley of influences, special flavors and notes from his world travels.

You might know John from his days leading the band on the late show with Stephen Colbert, or you may remember his over-the-top silver-spangled performance of his hit song Freedom at the 2022 Grammy Awards ceremony, where he was nominated for 11 awards and went home with a whopping five statues. He's also known for collaboration and there's that gumbo thing again. Recording with artists such as Stevie Wonder, Lana Del Rey and Willie Nelson. I've known John for years and I love that he's held on to the playful eccentricities. You used to see in his

street performances even as he became a music star. a music star. This is a man who loves music. He comes from a musical dynasty in New Orleans. The Batisse family members are key players and epic ensembles, including the Tramey brass band and the Olympia brass band. We caught up with John toward the end of a stretch filled with highlights and heartbreak. In the same year that he racked up all those Grammys, his wife was battling leukemia and came close to death.

Their story is featured in the new film, American Symphony. In this episode, you're here about a remarkable life that has been guided by food, family, and faith. Oh, hello. Plus, you get to hear John serve up the sounds of a New Orleans Christmas. All that's coming up, stay tuned. John Batiste. I am so glad you're in the studio with us.

I love the energy you bring to everything that you do, and so I know our listeners are in for a treat. Oh yes, hello. Hello, hello. Tell me about your mama's kitchen. Man, oh man. My mama's kitchen would turn out the most incredible dishes that would heal your soul and allow for your mind

to just run free. I remember as a kid going into the cookie jar and there would be peanut butter cookies. There would be chocolate chip cookies. There would be all types of incredible creations that she would make and I would never see them in the store or anywhere else. She would make fried chicken fried fish We had cabbage and collard greens black eye beans We had red beans and rice New Orleans style her special recipe developed over the years first white rice and brown rice

We had gumbo for the Christmas holiday and it would be this pot of gumbo that would last up until mid-January. Oh, come on. And you know what I mean. Take me inside that kitchen because you grew up in Kenner. And I always say that people in Kenner are like water people because you're kind of hard up against Lake Pontchitrain and then you got the Mississippi on the other side. And it's a place where you're kind of squeezed in and so the community is very tight there. Oh yeah. Take me inside your neighborhood and then your kitchen. What do that kitchen look like? Make me feel like I'm inside that kitchen. You walk in and it's one of the biggest rooms in the house that I grew up in. If not the biggest, we had a big kitchen where the dinner table was this monument in the center of the

kitchen. Just a regular old dinner table. We would play all kinds of beats on the table with our forks and our knives and there were the place settings that she would put out sometimes other times. We would just sit there and we would get to the food so quick, there'd be no time for the place setting. But you had brown, wood, and this incredible yellow, like sunshine, paint that was on the panels. So it was brown and yellow with the old white stove as the only break in the color scheme. And I just remember that yellow vividly. I remember having birthday parties in that

kitchen around that big old table, me and ten of my cousins, me being the youngest of the siblings and the cousins at the time, would just be in our Ninja Turtles regalia. And we would be sitting around the table, trading stories, and having a good time in that yellow would just be the backdrop. And it's just something about that really brings joy to me. I still sometimes look for that yellow when I'm thinking about creative ideas or aesthetics or even wardrobe.

I find that yellow from my childhood. You go back to that kitchen. I go back to that kitchen and so funny, I didn't think of that until you asked me this question. You describe something that I have to go back to. You said when you'd all be sitting at the table, you'd pick up your knife and your fork and your spoon and you'd be working out beats at the table.

Describe that for me. It was one of the things that you do as a kid just for fun, but then I have some really talented family members and it would become a form of the creative process starting in the kitchen. We'd be playing a beat and we'd hear something on the radio or we'd be trying to mimic something from a video game soundtrack or score and that would lead to us going to our instruments and actually making something out of this kitchen table beat. Take the knife and you take the back of the knife and you just hit it at the bottom of

the table or you hit it in the center somewhere that you can get that low echo, that drone, that's mimicking a bass drum. And then you have your fork and you might hit it against your plate or you might hit it against your glass and that's kind of the symbol and the snare all in one. And you create something together. It becomes our drum circle right there in that kitchen. You were very humble. You said you come from a musical family. You come from not just a musical family. You come from one of the legendary musical families of New Orleans. Your father was part of the Batista brothers.

You have cousins who play. Your sister plays piano also. How important is music to your family and how much was that melded with what you did in the kitchen in regard to food? Because in New Orleans, food is a zone kind of music. That's right. I was growing up in a time where regional music still had a lot of its foothold.

You couldn't go to a place like New Orleans and not be introduced to a new artist that you hadn't heard of. There were a lot of local musicians and local artists that were influential. And I remember being in the kitchen. This was funny, I remember it now. We always had a soundtrack playing. There was always something playing when we were there to the point that my first dinner that I had outside of the house where there was not music playing in the background

It felt strange like I felt like there was something missing with the ritual of the meal. So It played a role, but it was more just a part of the way that we lived and breathed in that time and particularly in New Orleans We lived and breathed in that time, and particularly in New Orleans. Tell me about your mom and describe for us also how she operated in that kitchen. That's a big room. And she worked. And so she probably had to work in on a tight schedule when she got home because you had a big family. And it sounds like your doors were always open.

So there was always cousins and neighbors and fellow bandmates from the marching band at school probably coming over. What was that like for her? Katherine Batisse. Katherine would come into that kitchen after being at work for the entirety of the morning into the early evening. Come back after getting us from school and prepare a meal like clockwork. It would always be around 7.37 o'clock around

that area. And it's amazing to think about how she was able to do it. She then decides partway throughout childhood. I'm in middle school. And my mother decides to go back to school to get yet another master's degree. Changes career path becomes an environmentalist before it's in vogue, before it's something that is a part of the national conversation. Truly visionary and does this while never missing a meal, never having us as a family miss dinner time. You think about how she was able to do that and it's mind blowing to me.

She's a superhero. How was she able to do that? Part of what I think is instilled in me when I'm putting this enormous amount of work into what it is that I do, it becomes a labor of love, it becomes something that is a bigger part of your life than just a job or something that needs to happen.

It's a part of how you communicate. She really saw cooking as a way for her to communicate her love to us. It wasn't something that she felt was getting in the way of other things she wanted to do. And I know it was still difficult because she still had to put all the time in and we've talked about this as I've taken up cooking lately

and I've tried to learn everything and one of her recipes. But she says, I actually missed those days. She says she's fond of that time of really providing that bedrock for our family. Mrs. Avenue all there. Yes, I'm out of the house, my sister's out of the house. We don't have those days of everybody's friends and cousins, did everybody

coming into the house. It was a lot, but she also misses it, which I found to be a deep thing that she shared with me recently. And obviously I miss it, but I wasn't the one in there cooking. So, truly was a labor of love for her. Yes, yes, it's right. Now you had seven children in that household. Oh my goodness. That's a big house, a loud house, and a lot of mouths to feed.

And I'm wondering why, when you ticked through all the food that you loved, you talked about gumbo and you talked about everything else, but when you talked about your mom's red rice recipe that she perfected, I'm wondering if red rice became such a staple because that's a New Orleans tradition, or also because you can stretch red beans and rice,

and you can feed a whole lot of people. Funny enough, red beans and rice wasn't, when I was a kid, it wasn't my favorite. She had a way of serializing the meals. It would become a series where Mondays was red beans and rice and that's a tradition in New Orleans. Wednesdays was some form of spaghetti and meatballs, a spaghetti and ground beef or some incredible pasta.

That was my favorite growing up. And Fridays would be fish, whether it was catfish, filet, fried fish, any form of her recipe of making fish for Friday, we would have. And then Thursday and Tuesday would be something that, now look back, those were her days where she would experiment and find different recipes, whether it was stew or any form of chicken recipe,

baked chicken, stewed chicken. So, Monday's, I would often grow tired of having red beans and rice. And I would say, we have red beans again. Oh man. Now, as I grow older, that changed. And I think the reason was, you know, she had red beans and rice every Monday growing up.

And I'm sure that my grandmother had some form of that tradition growing up. So you imagine it's a part of your life that you don't even think about. It's second nature to make ribings and rice on Mondays. So that's what was special to me about it. Not that I got it as a kid, but as an adult. And now I make it myself. And every Monday that I get a chance, I'm doing it.

What's so special about her recipe for red beans and rice? She's figured out a way to make it healthy in the ways that she's grown to understand health and health consciousness. There's certain things you can keep out of the recipe or replace in the recipe while maintaining the depth of flavor and the nuance of the taste of New Orleans style red beans and rice.

And she's the only person that I've seen effectively do it and to do it in a way where you don't lose the essence of the recipe. Wow. So when she tried to make it healthier, does that mean that she took like the ham hawk out of it? Sometimes you'll take the pork out of it. Sometimes you'll take the rice for us. Brown rice is healthier. If you study your blood type, things like that. Just little things here or there, or what about if we were to take that element and add a little bit of texture to the beans so that

when you eat the beans there's a little, it's a hint of turmeric and what that does for your system. It's just so many things like that. She comes up with and she could really articulate how she's thinking about it because I don't actually know what makes her reach for these elements, but it really works. You know, and you have to be careful when you do that, because when you start tinkering with an old family recipe, people will want to snatch your soul's sister license. I mean, they're like, who stole the soul from the family recipe? You know, you can get run out of the house if you must.

Exactly. That's the thing about it, though. You taste it and the soul is there and you don't even know that the thing that's typically in there is not. So you're cooking a lot now and you're trying to replicate what you grew up with. Is that something that you've always done?

Did you just realize that you have now of time to cook that happened during COVID? When did you start to tinker in the kitchen? I really started during the pandemic to take the art of cooking seriously. I cooked for many years but I never really had the time to focus on perfecting certain recipes and I really took that time during the pandemic and the lockdown that we all experienced and hopefully gained a skill

out of, that was my skill. That was the thing that I wanted to refine for many years. And then I had the time to not only dedicate to it, but also my mother had the time to sit and be the master chef that she is and teach me her sous chef. How did you do that over zoom were you in New York and she was in New Orleans. Yes, we did it over zoom, we did it over face time, we had a chance to get together many times throughout the pandemic as well. It was a very long period of time, but it was productive in us being able to focus and really me taking the time to document all of these recipes and get her to think about how she did it.

Sometimes she wouldn't remember, she wouldn't know how she's achieving these things in the kitchen until I would ask her. All the kinds of little details would come out, and it was a lot of trial and error that way. There's a lot that happens in a kitchen that doesn't have anything to do with food. What were the important lessons that you learned, the important wisdom that you got in your kitchen that continues to help you today. Kitchen was a place to deliberate. It's a place of solace, place to process ideas.

The kitchen was not just to eat, it was to go even late night. If you wanted to just take a breather, sit at the table and let your thoughts roam and let your imagination really speak to you. That was where the kitchen came into play for me as a kid. I would draw on the kitchen table. I would then draw on books when I was told that I shouldn't draw on the table.

You know what I mean? Oh, when you drew on the table, I thought you were drawing on a piece of paper that was on the table. You were actually drawing on the table. Yes, when I was very young, yes, absolutely. Oops. Something about being in the kitchen, it just would bring these ideas to the surface

and there was a feeling of being safe in the kitchen. So the kitchen still is that for me in my home today. It's a gathering place and it's a place where memories are made and we talk about many things that have nothing to do with cooking. I wonder if the kitchen for you today is also a healing space. You and your wife have been on quite a journey. And is she still in chemo right now? Yes, she's in chemo, but she's cancer-free.

Thank God, thank you. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. You two met at band camp when you were teenagers. You've been together a long time. And in the film that I hope everyone sees American Symphony, you talk about your health journey. And I'm wondering if the kitchen for you now is not just a place of inspiration and respite, but if it is a very important healing

space as well. Absolutely. There's a feeling of real triumph when we come home and I'm imagining us coming home after her recent time in the hospital, where we didn't know she would make it back home. This is a time where there's a lot of uncertainty and the comeback that first night and sit in the kitchen together again after months of being displaced and having uncertainty be the rule of the day. That was a very special, special memory for me. And truly is a place now

where there's so many things that occur that are healing. I remember we had the launch of my album from our kitchen. We could have gone to a venue or a fancy restaurant, even or some performance hall. a fancy restaurant, even, or some performance hall. But we felt, after this year that we've had, let's have all of the most important people in our life come to our kitchen. And let's just share this time and do something very special in that way. We've had many gatherings in that regard

since this time has been so challenging to really fortify our home and we have a model that we have engraved in one of my instruments that's in the kitchen is the model family and freedom. And that's the place where we've been manifesting that ever since this journey has begun. Family and freedom. I think I might want to put that on the wall in my kitchen too. I like that.

You know what I mean. You're listening to the Audible original, your mom is kitchen. Like what you're hearing, the next episode is available now, exclusively from Audible. You can listen to new episodes on Audible two weeks before you can hear them anywhere else. John, we know you now as an extrovert. You wear flashy clothes. You always dress in glad rags. We've seen you on stage. We've seen you every night when you were leading the band on Colbert.

You have hair as always popping. I listened to your sister in an interview. And she said that she's always amazed when she sees that version of Jopatis because she remembers a shy little kid who just wanted to make music and draw and didn't want to talk to anyone. What happened? How did you suddenly burst out of that show and become the Jopatis that we see in love today?

Everything is always inside. We have so much inside of us that is a big part of who we are that comes out in stages. Things happen in your life in stages. And I believe that when you become a performer, the job of the performer in part is to figure out how to manifest all of the incredible gifts that you've been given and beauty that's within you and communicate that. How do you communicate it as a performer as a manifestation of your art. And that process helps you as a human being to really step out of your shell. I'm still an introvert, but I believe that developing first the desire to communicate all that's within and then the craft of performing and being on stage,

that led me to where I am today. Does your music help hold you out of your shyness? As I asked this question, I'm remembering a night. It was several years ago. We were both in Colorado for a big ideas festival. And you walked into the room playing your instrument. And you were almost invisible behind the instrument. And I wonder if that was part of what you do is use the music as this is my way of finding an entry point. Absolutely. Music truly is a language. Music communicates. Music speaks to people on a level that many times even words can't reach. And that's the thing about stepping into any environment, whether it's the highest of the high or it's the most mundane everyday down-home environments, everything that you do and everything that you say with

your instrument is felt immediately without need of translation. Now tell me what you have though, you picked up your melodica. That's right. It's a harmonica and a keyboard put together. I like to call it a harmonica board. It's a really cool instrument. It's a verse to anyone feeling better than someone else. It's a child's toy. A verse to pomposity. It feels like it's a character. To me, it feels like a world. It can go anywhere in space and time. It's a form of time travel.

When did you pick up the Melodica? Around 14 or 15, my father gifted me one. From his travels, he went to Japan and brought Malatica back. And from then on, I'd started to carry it around with me when I moved to New York to go to Juilliard and I would be in the halls of Juilliard, this conservatory with the Malatica. And I would be in the subways and I would be playing the Malatica.

And then eventually, it started to become a part of my performances. We do these things where it's called a love riot. Sometimes we start in the subway cart or on the subway platform. And we would take the people and we would march while playing. I would be playing my instrument through this processional while it's happening. And then people would gather along the way. And then we'd get so exciting that from afar, you'd think you're seeing something crazy going down

in the street, you know, to see hundreds of people, sometimes we'd do it after the concert and you'd take literally thousands of people from the venue and you would march thousands of people gathering more along the way down into the subway and cram into a card on the platform and just be this this real celebratory environment. So this is the evolution of how I've used this instrument, this little low instrument to really create this energy in the world and it's about community. It's a second line. It's a New Orleans tradition. Oh yes. Yes, we've done second lines in New Orleans for

many, many centuries. You think about the beginning of New Orleans in the march and you think about how the march was then taken and transformed into all of the different forms of New Orleans music. And now today, you know, the love riot is an extension of that tradition. But if you think of the second line as a form of ritual, as a form celebrating the life of a deceased relative, a loved one, the love riot is a form of creating community anywhere we go. When you brought that instrument with you to Julia, the conservatory, did they understand that? No, they didn't get it, but it's okay.

I've always been someone who sees things before they're present. You get a vision or you have an idea. And you just learn to trust it. I respect all of my professors and all the different folks who are seeing another vision for me. But ultimately, you got to stick to the track that you know is your track. Stay on that right track. That's right. So they tried to actually tell you to put that instrument down. is your track. All right. Stay on that right track. That's right.

So they tried to actually tell you to put that instrument down. They said it was a toy. Yeah, yeah. It's people who are definitely mired telling me things that I didn't want to hear. But it's hard to ignore someone that you trust or a mentor or a friend or anybody who doesn't get what you're doing. But I also think it's important. Because if you don't

have to push back, you don't develop a certain resolve in your artistry that you need to really reach a level of excellence. You were a drummer originally, and you took a piano at about age 11, and when your mom started sending you to, I thought your music teacher's name. Oh, yes. What is her name? Say her name. You just make sure. Yes, miss Shirley. When you share this, you miss Shirley. For your music lessons, your mom, as the story goes, said, you need to go where this instrument

will take you. Oh, yeah. She saw a vision, just like I saw a vision with the Melodica and the Hormona board, not this instrument that I'm improving upon and even created versions of. My mother even, as a kid, saw me as a pianist when I was playing the drums. This wasn't something that was obvious. She saw it. She had a vision and said, oh, this child and the piano have some business to take care of.

And she found Miss Shirley, who was this incredible classical piano teacher, to guide part of my process of development. And it's taken you to some interesting places, John Beattie. Oh, yeah, from my mama's kitchen to my mama and I all around the world. It's beautiful. I always take my family with me everywhere that I can. So what is the soundtrack for the holiday sound like? My dad loves to sing the Christmas song during the holidays and that's the tradition of him and I will go to the piano

and he'll sing and I'll play and I'll sing and he'll play the bass sometimes and we'll play together and it'll be a great moment. And we did it one year on stage and it was so beautiful to share that with folks. First time outside of just our living room. And that's a tradition. And I love doing not necessarily carols,

but I love having these sort of performances in the house. It would be my family and friends sometimes will come over. This past year, we were in Saratoga Springs where Sulayka is from. And we had a wonderful gathering. My parents were there, her parents and family friends, and we gathered around the piano and her living room. The fool was on the table and my dad said, let's sing.

And we sung again, a Christmas song, things like that. We sung some Louis Armstrong, you know, what a wonderful world. Just songs that make you feel good about being alive in a dark world, in a time where things can be a little heavy to even process around the holidays and where a lot of people may feel there's no hope. We want to put some hope out from our living room. You have so many influences in your music.

You're from New Orleans. You went to school in New York. So like us from Saratoga Springs, her parents are Tunisian and her mamas from Switzerland. So you have all these different influences inside of you as you play music. I wonder, is it possible for you to share a traditional Christmas song and show us through your music how you add a different flavor to it depending on the influence of the various people in your life?

Absolutely so you see. music You can really make that instrument do so much more than I think any other artist can when they pick up that. Thank you so much. Harmonica keyboard. I want to talk to you about the holidays in New Orleans because the holidays in New Orleans. Because the holidays in New Orleans are a little bit different. They're a little bit shinier, a little bit spicier. Describe New Orleans during the holidays, during that magical period between thanksgiving and Christmas, and Hanukkah and Kwanza, and all the other holidays

that we celebrate in November December. Oh wow. There's so much magic in the air. The holidays are very heightened in New Orleans because you already have this music and you already have this pluralistic thinking, this celebration of diversity, of variety. You find all types of ways that the communal spirit and the holiday spirit is brought to life in New Orleans. So I highly recommend for any listeners out there who want to figure out a place to spend the holidays and have been in New Orleans. Come on down. It's delicious. There's no excuse for having a bad meal in New Orleans. The food is just, it is on a plane all its own.

What's Christmas like in the Batista household? What's on the menu? There's a lot of great things that are traditional and the staple, as I mentioned, is the gumbo, my mother makes, and then what happens is it becomes not a competition, maybe a friendly competition, but we'll go to my grandfather's house, and there's another part of gumbo.

We'll bring our gumbo, and you get to try the gumbo from my mom, the gumbo from my grandparents out. That was a tradition and still goes on. You know, that's a big part of it. It's a gumbo throwdown, you go and you gotta be ready because everybody's spending about a week making the pie. This is not some overnight situation. You have to put thought in your gumbo. No, no, gumbo is not for the faint. I mean. You have to put thought in your gumbo.

No, no. Gumbo is not for the faint. I mean, you have to put some time into gumbo. Yeah. Yeah. For those who don't understand, a lot of people think they've had gumbo and they had gumbo. A lot of people call stuff gumbo. That's not gumbo. But for those who know, when you have gumbo and you're making the gumbo happen, it's very meticulous. Tell me about your mama's gumbo. Oh, I would say that when you're making a room, I like the room to feel like it's not so watery but not so thick. And her gumbo, the room that she has, it has just the right amount of that swamp texture to it, where you just,

you put piece of bread in that and it just melts in your mouth, perfect. It takes two days for her to get to the point where she's ready to put all the ingredients in the pot. So it's like, she preps the potty. It's a whole other approach than anything I've ever seen. I'm listening carefully here because I make Christmas gumbo over here. So I'm trying to stop up some kitchen wisdom right now. Because it does take away. Oh, yeah, I make gumbo over your Christmas. See?

So, okay. So what do you have? Do you do chicken? Or do you do seafood? Or is it both chicken to see food? Chicken, chicken and seafood. Yep. Same, same, same.

And sometimes a little dollop of crab on the top because we're here. Yep. And we're close to Baltimore. My husband's from Baltimore. So And sometimes a little dollop of crab on the top because we're here and we're close to Baltimore. My husband's from Baltimore. So I have a little little piece crab on the top. Now we haven't done a gumbo smackdown. Maybe we should think about doing that. Does that just mean that there's more gumbo on the table? But gumbo is different.

Oh, I know somebody. And every household. This past Christmas, he'll remain names, but a good friend of ours, prominent individual challenged my mother to a gumball throwdown. And he's not from New Orleans. And he said, I want to challenge you one bite. And we will know who the winner is. So I'm looking forward to that. This Christmas, maybe you should come by and have part of the friendly competition.

I'm never voting against your mom. So I'm just going to say that right now. maybe you should come by and have part of the friendly competition. I'm never voting against your mom, so I'm just gonna say that right now. I'm always casting a vote for my own gumbo, but I'm willing to try somebody else's. Yeah, it was a very bold claim, especially for someone who is not from the home of gumbo. Come on, not. Yeah, that's. Now back to her gumbo. So she does her room over two days,

same pot every year, wooden spoon. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Always a wooden spoon. And you have to kind of hit the spoon when the room starts to do its thing. Yeah, yeah. You kind of hit the pot.

And the room does this little dance inside of the settles down again. That's right. That's a key moment, because you can easily burn your room. You can easily burn your room. Don't ask the door. You've got to focus.

Yeah. It's a matter of seconds between not just burning your room, but your whole gumbo pot being messed up. And then you have to start over again because I, you know, I can't believe I'm going to emit this in front of a microphone, but I have done that. But that's part of us and that's part of the wisdom. Yeah, you got to get there. So now you know, you just keep your eye on that. But when she does that,

when did she put on her okra? The okra comes right after the rule is done. Because the thing is, you don't want your okra to be burnt. Hmm, no, no, no. No, you understand. Of no, no. No. You understand? Of course I understand, yes. Now, there are some controversial aspects of gumbo. Some people put a sliced egg, boil, hard boiled egg in their gumbo.

I never will eat that. That's the people I was talking about that think they eat gumbo. That's not gumbo. And then what's the thing about a scoop of potato salad and gumbo? Oh, interesting. I don't know about that. I haven't had it like that. I have potato salad with the gumbo. Not potato salad in the gumbo. I don't know about that. Some people put a little potato salad in the gumbo. I've never really understand it.

I understood it. No shame to people who do it, but it is a curiosity. Y'all go ahead and do that. Also, some people have corn. They put in the gumbo. I know. Corn and gumbo, really? One time I had that and I will tell you, I felt like this is sacrilege. I can't believe you're doing this. Yeah, I know, no corn and the gumbo. Okay, so what are your plans for this Christmas?

What are you doing this holiday? Hoping to help some folks out. We have a lot of plans to use this season to give back and there's a lot to celebrate in our family. There's so many great things going on. We're sharing this big part of our life in the film that's coming out around the holidays. American Symphony, this documentary that we spoke about.

And this is also an album year for me with world music radio being this love letter to humanity finding ways to engage with the community through the holidays is always a big part of how I think about any album cycle year. So stay on the lookout for ways that you can help out and be involved. And then of course just eating and being around the kitchen table, going to see my family and friends and celebrating life while we have it. You have that sign in your kitchen, family and freedom.

What does freedom mean to you? Freedom means living in a way that we were made to live and not having anything that blocks that, but most important, not having anything in your mind. The mind frees the soul, frees the heart. You can't have your thoughts, thinking and operating at a law frequency, then you are made to live at. I love this conversation. It's made me very hungry. Oh, you're telling me I'm about to go right now and get some. I gotta get some. Yeah, that is a stat. That's the next stop.

There's food on the horizon for me. Ooh, we. Love you, John Batiste. Thanks so much. Oh, yes. Love you. Thank you, and I'll see you soon. Oh, yes.

Love you. Thank you, and I'll see you soon. Oh, yes. Love you, thank you. And I'll see you soon. Whenever I hear John's music, I'm going to think about that sign in his family kitchen, family, and freedom. His childhood kitchen had plenty of both. And this story shows how that space

can be an incubator for creativity, a place to let dream sore, a place to find healing and solace and tough times, a place to figure out how to let folks know how much you care about them, which is what John's mama always did. I've heard John talk about his family's famous red beans and rice recipe for years. And now we can all make it in our own kitchens. Now a quick clarification, we began this podcast series with Michelle Obama's recipe for red rice, which has its roots in South Carolina and should not be confused with a New Orleans staple called red beans and rice. That's a simple dish that packs a lot of flavor if you know what you're doing.

And to make sure you do, you can find the Bitesht family recipe on my Instagram page at Michelle underscore underscore Norris. That's two underscores. You will also find background on my family's Christmas gumbo tradition. And I agree with John no boiled eggs or potato salad in the gumbo, please, it stands strong on its own. Rulala! Happy Mary, everything to all of you. See you next week, and until then, be Bountiful. This has been a higher ground and audible original produced by a higher ground studios. Senior producer Natalie Rin, producer Sonia Tan, and associate producer Angel Carreras.

Sound design and engineering from Andrew Epen and Roy Baum. Higher ground audio's editorial assistants are Jenna Levin and Camilla Thertacous. Executive producers for higher ground are Nick White, Mukde Mohan, Dan Fehrman, and me, Michele Norris. Executive producers for Audible are Nick DiAngelo and Ann Hepperman. The show's closing song is 504 by The Soul Rebels. Editorial and web support from Melissa Bear and Say What Media, our talent booker is Angela Paluso.

Special thanks this week to the Creamery in Brooklyn, New York, and to Clean Cuts in Washington, DC. Chief Content Officer for Audible is Rachel Giazza, and that's it. Goodbye, everybody. Make sure and come back to see what we're serving up next week. by Higher Ground Audio LLC. Sound recording copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio LLC. Higher Ground. Higher Ground