What is jazz?

By Jonathan Batiste, Special to CNN - December 26, 2012

Editor's note: Jonathan Batiste founded the Stay Human Band and is the associate artistic director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. Batiste has been featured on the HBO series "Treme," BET and in Spike Lee's "Red Hook Summer." Follow @jonbatiste.

(CNN) -- What is jazz?

This is an impossible question, and one with many answers. Having spent more than a decade as a jazz artist, I've garnered some insights. As a youngster growing up in New Orleans, surrounded by the city's sounds and rhythms, I was influenced by a wide variety of music: brass bands, blues, ragtime, R&B, soul, rock 'n' roll, Dixieland and more.

I played the percussion in my family's band, switching to piano at age 11. Since then, music has been a part of my everyday life. I've had the good fortune to play with inspiring artists across many genres -- Wynton Marsalis, Prince, Busta Rhymes among them. What's given me the foundation to be able to join such varied musicians is my jazz training.

Jazz is subtle, emotional and accommodating. It is intellectual and sometimes even scientific. Most genres of music are not nearly as multidimensional, which in part is why the art form has such a small audience. In stark comparison to pop music, contemporary jazz seems too circuitous for most listeners to enjoy casually. The challenge for the contemporary jazz musician, as I see it, is making this subtle and complex art palatable to the greater public.

Jazz is complex.


Some of the greatest musical minds of all-time were jazz artists. They were able to master their instruments, redefine music theory and repeatedly innovate the already formidable body of work present before them. Many of them did so while navigating through the tumultuous social climate from which the music was birthed.

John Blake: Dave Brubeck, ambassador to a new America
As a performer, part of my job is to take the audience on a musical journey to somewhere they've never been. The Stay Human movement I've started is about experiencing music -- not about it being on a stage and untouchable, but something that you viscerally experience on the subways and streets.

Stay Human has grown to be more than a band, and has become a local movement that is expanding and shifting the way people experience jazz. We're trying to harness all of the musical elements that I grew up absorbing in New Orleans, and couple them with contemporary mainstream sounds. I want people to feel and hear jazz as they never thought it could be played.

Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/26/opinion/batiste-what-is-jazz/index.html