Jon Batiste’s Jazz Membership at Baha Mar Is Reviving the Native Music Scene within the Bahamas — This is How

Jon Batiste likes heat climate, so when the Oscar- and Grammy-awarded music artist acquired a name final spring about opening a jazz membership within the Bahamas, he hopped on the following flight from Brooklyn.

He hadn’t spent a lot time within the Bahamas earlier than, and shortly discovered himself falling in love with extra than simply the subtropical local weather. The music of the Bahamas reminded him of the rhythms he heard rising up in New Orleans. “There’s such a kinship between each,” Batiste instructed Journey + Leisure. “The sound of what I hear after I go right here to a Junkanoo is identical feeling I get at Mardi Gras,” he added, referring to the Caribbean competition held within the Bahamas.

Since departing from The Late Present With Stephen Colbert in 2022, he was open to connecting creatively with the worldwide African group. “The African diaspora got here by the Bahamas, Jamaica, Bahia, and Cuba — and went as much as New Orleans,” he stated. “New Orleans is the northernmost tip of the Caribbean, in some ways.”

It didn’t take a lot convincing after that. In January 2025, he unveiled Jon Batiste’s Jazz Membership at Baha Mar to a crowd of 300 VIPs that included The Every day Present host Jon Stewart, native musicians, former NFL gamers, and Bahamian dignitaries.

The 12,900-square-foot membership is situated on the on line casino flooring of Baha Mar, the mega-luxury resort in Nassau that additionally consists of three inns, a water park, a golf course, an aquarium, and extra eating places than many small cities. The membership’s 278-seat area is as glitzy and glossy as an awards-ceremony stage, and was designed with nods to Bahamas’ historic jazz golf equipment.

Through the Nineteen Forties and 50s, golf equipment with names like The Cat and Fiddle, The Silver Slipper, The Banana Boat, and The Buena Vista fueled a homegrown jazz scene that attracted native artists and worldwide stars like Louis Armstrong, Harry Belafonte, and Nina Simone. These golf equipment are lengthy gone, Batiste stated, because the Bahamas grew to become higher recognized for its tourist-friendly seashores, reasonably than its music. “We wrestle with an identical factor in New Orleans, the place the business of tourism conceals who we truly are, reasonably than revealing it,” he stated.

He sees his modern jazz membership as a method of introducing Bahamian music tradition to new audiences.  In spite of everything, he credit a lot of his personal musical journey to such golf equipment. “For greater than half of my life, I used to be at all times in jazz golf equipment,” he stated. “My first gig in New York was at one of many oldest jazz golf equipment within the nation. And that was after I was 17, and a pupil at Juilliard. The earliest experiences I had had been in venues like this.”

“Place is at all times tied to the track anyway,” he added. Certainly, Batiste approaches journey in an identical method that he does music. He flies loads for work, however at any time when he and his spouse — the best-selling creator Suleika Jaouad — plan a trip collectively, it’s extra about discovering a groove, reasonably than dropping pins on a map or accumulating experiences. “We don’t journey to test one thing off a listing,” he stated. “We attempt to catch a vibe.”

That was definitely true for 2 of his most up-to-date journeys: mountaineering to a mountaintop close to Lausanne, Switzerland, and driving in an RV from the desert village of Marfa, Texas, to the luxurious, arts-and-crafts city of Ojai, California. “I’m completely happy to go wherever, so long as it’s with my spouse,” he added with a large smile.

One factor he by no means does, nonetheless, is test a bag when flying. “It’s nice to have the ability to journey gentle,” he stated. “And as Denzel Washington likes to say, ‘I’m leaving right here with one thing.’ In case you don’t know that meme, look it up.”

In preparation for the membership’s opening, Batiste spent a couple of month at Baha Mar, staying on the Grand Hyatt, and his ties to the native music and artwork group have deepened. Does he and his spouse wish to spend extra time within the Bahamas? “My spouse desires to, and he or she’s the boss,” he stated. “She grew up not in a chilly local weather, and I grew up in New Orleans, so we actually do not just like the winter.”

“She paints as properly, and we’ve gone to a whole lot of galleries,” he added. ”We made numerous associates already.”