The genre-blending music of Jon Batiste is all about feeling good.
Watch his entertaining, high-energy music video Freedom to gain an appreciation of Batiste’s upbeat sound and artistry. He recently won five Grammy awards, including the coveted Best Album of the Year for his LP We Are.
Batiste is a Juilliard trained musical dynamo. He’s a jazz pianist, singer, songwriter, composer, dancer, bandleader for the Stephen Colbert late show, and more.
An article at Billboard.com noted that Batiste “performed on and co-produced all of We Are, wrote or co-wrote all but a couple of the album’s tracks, and played bass, keyboards, piano, strings, mellotron and even the theremin (!!) over the course of the LP.”
PBS.org wrote the following about Batiste:
Born into a long lineage of Louisiana musicians, Jon Batiste is a globally celebrated musician, educator, bandleader, and television personality whose musical skill, artistic vision, and exuberant charisma have garnered him the well-deserved title of ‘crowned prince of jazz.’ Jon is recognized for his originality, jaw-dropping talent, and dapper sense of style.
Talent, hard work, and exceptional training account for much of Batiste’s success. But perhaps the most important quality that helps him stand out is originality.
The importance of being weird
Josh S. Rose is a director, filmmaker, and photographer based in Los Angeles, California.
According to his website, “Rose spent over two decades as a creative director in advertising before breaking off on his own to pursue his passion for documentary photography and creative filmmaking.”
In an interview on The Gray Matters podcast, Rose talked about the importance of being weird in photography. Finding your quirks. Your uniqueness.
Rose noted that we have democratized photography because everyone has a smartphone in their pocket. Everyone is a photographer now.
The problem is a “homogeneity of imagery out there.”Everyone is taking the same photos, selfies, food shots, and shallow depth-of-field portraits.
Instagram has become a sea of similarities.
Many of the photos are good, thanks to today’s technology, but they’re all mostly the same. “In the old days, you had a quirk. Something that made you different,” Rose says on the podcast.
I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird. — Frank Zappa
Rose’s advice for creatives is to figure out what’s unique about you, to the exclusion of everything else.
The question is, how do you find your original voice?
Follow your vision
It’s fine to admire the creative work of others and to use it for inspiration. But then, if you want your work to stand out, you have to turn inward.
You have to find your vision.
Photographer Cole Thompson echoes Josh Rose’s “find your uniqueness” advice in a blog post, where he wrote:
If you could do just one thing to improve your photography, it would be to find and follow your Vision. That is the driving creative force behind all my images. It’s not the camera, the software, the location, the rules of composition, following photographic fads, or imitating others.
For me, it’s finding my Vision and following it. Knowing what I love and pursuing it. Ignoring what others are doing and creating images that I love, regardless of what anyone else thinks of them.
How do you find your vision? Thompson argues that you should critically analyze your work. He wrote:
I personally find this recent trend to have one’s work critiqued by an expert disturbing. What you are getting is only an opinion and there are many of those out there. And the critiquer’s opinions are colored by their Vision and their personal preferences.
No doubt there are experts who can mentor you and help improve your skills. But at some point, you have to leverage your vision. Your weirdness. Your unique approach or quality that no one else has.
Once you’ve identified your unique vision, then you have to sharpen it. Refine it. Authenticity is important, but quality has to be there, too.
You’re the only version
During an interview with author and CNN host Fareed Zacharia, Jon Batiste said the following:
There’s something about a person that makes them the only version that exists. You’re the only version. Why do we try to be like other people? Something that’s led into you’re existing today is so, so unique. It’s so special. You’re the only one that will ever exist.
Why do we try to be like other people?
Usually, because we admire them. We want to be like them. Copy their style, look, approach, success, etc.
But alas, there is only one version of each of us.
We can emulate others, and maybe find some degree of success. But we’ll never be happy because we betrayed our uniqueness. We silenced our voices.
The number one thing to avoid in your creative work is sameness.
If your creative work looks like everyone else’s, dig deeper.
Figure out what excites you. Experiment. Ignore Instagram and keep creating.
Look for clues and themes in your earlier work. Build on that, create every day, and your unique work and vision will emerge.
Jon Batiste grew up in a musical family, in the creative atmosphere of Louisiana. That created a great foundation. Along with his Juilliard education. But he listened to his unique voice. His vision.
That’s why Jon Batiste is a Grammy-winning artist, and we’re all the richer for it.
How about you? What’s your quirk or unique quality that sets you apart? How can you develop it, refine it, and share it with the world?
It’s never too late to start sharing the real you with the rest of the world.
Before you go
I’m John P. Weiss. I write elegant essays about life, shoot artful photos, draw whimsical cartoons, and paint moody landscapes. To follow along, check out The Saturday Letter here.
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This post was previously published on Medium.com.
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Artworks by John P. Weiss
