Jon Batiste goes into Sunday’s 64th Annual Grammy Awards with 11 nominations, more than any artist this year. But for Batiste, who is also the bandleader and a producer on CBS’ “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” success is not without challenges. Batiste and Suleika Jaouad, whom he calls the love of his life, talk about his music, her battle with leukemia, and more in an emotional and revealing interview with correspondent Jim Axelrod for “CBS Sunday Morning,” to be broadcast April 3 on CBS and streamed on Paramount+.
Batiste and Jaouad, the author of the bestseller “Between Two Kingdoms,” a meditation on being a leukemia survivor, learned just eight days before the Grammy nominations were announced that her illness was back.
“One thing that I’ve learned from this time is … it can all go away,” Batiste said. “Things can change very quickly. From one day to the next, your world can be turned upside-down.”
Jaouad had her first chemo treatment the day Batiste learned of his nominations. They’ve found a way together to balance the good and the bad.
“It’s holding the absolutely, you know, gutting, heartbreaking, painful things, and the beautiful soulful things, in the same palm of one hand,” Jaouad said. “And it’s hard to do that. You have to do that, because otherwise, the grief takes over.”
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Jaouad said the notion that when someone is sick it’s all tears and sadness is all wrong. Instead, she said, they have laughed together more than ever before.
The spread of the Omicron variant made it impossible for anyone to be with Jaouad during parts of her treatment. To help her overcome the moments of isolation in the hospital, Batiste turned to music, writing lullabies for her.
“Utter isolation. And I expressed that effect to Jon,” Jaouad said. “And next thing I know, I see him hunched over his computer. And a half an hour later … he starts playing this lullaby. And every single day after that, he wrote me a new lullaby.
“And it felt like he was right there … sleeping by my bedside,” she said.
“They had a healing property to the music,” Batiste said.
“That you wrote just for her to provide support and strength?” Axelrod asked.
“Yes, absolutely,” he replied. “And to fill the room with these healing properties … for me, that’s my way. Everybody will have their way, you know? But seek that. Meditate on that. Focus on those things. Find those things.”
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