37 Quotes by Jon Batiste

The music is really about sharing an experience. That's why we call it Stay Human. It's like we're sharing this genuine human exchange.

Earliest musical memory is probably being scared stiff with my family's band as a youngster on stage playing the conga drums.

Imagine if you grew up in a place where your lineage was there for a hundred years, and part of the culture was to play music 50 percent of the time. You'd probably have a lot of musicians in your family too.

The Batiste family is a large musical family in Louisiana, out in New Orleans. People go to New Orleans, and if they go to any club, four days out of the week I guarantee you that you will find a Batiste playing in the ensemble.

Whatever I do with music, I try to make it align deeply with the values and principles of who I am and what I believe the purpose of my life is.

There's a tradition - in New Orleans it still exists - where people play in the street. People play outside of the venues. Food, music, and that cultural exchange, it happens anywhere.

We played Carnegie Hall, and that was one time where I felt... Carnegie Hall as a legendary, very venerable place to perform. I'd never heard of anyone going into the Hall and kind of standing on the seats and playing throughout the aisles and having the audience stand on the seats. So when we did that in 2013, even for me it was a shock.

You can't hate the person next to you when you're laughing and dancing together.

It's not like the old competition that you had between Leno and Letterman. It's a friendly competition between Fallon and Stephen.