Jon Batiste: NPR Music Field Recordings

Jon Batiste is from New Orleans, where a street parade might assemble around the corner on any given day. Evidently, he likes a good walkabout: He’s liable to lead his band at a guerrilla concert in the New York City subway, or out of a venue, or — as he did at the Newport Jazz Festival — off stage and into the audience. After playing a set at Newport, he and the Stay Human band kept walking. They walked past the backstage trailers, through the quad stage, and up onto an overgrown rampart of Fort Adams — the 190-year-old edifice which houses the festival. After a long day of travel, interviews and a headlining performance, they were there to give us a special and private encore. They chose the tune “Believe In Love,“ which Batiste voiced with a tender edge and a melodica. Appropriately enough, the keyboardist and bandleader calls his portable performances “love riots“: attempts to generate instant community through music. Then, having done their best to share said love with our cameras, the six musicians st