To Jon Batiste, music is about much more than playing the right notes, releasing hit records and winning awards — although he does all of that, with regularity.

“It’s more than entertainment,” the Louisiana native — who performs Friday, Oct. 24, at Detroit’s Fox Theatre — explains via phone from New York, where he now resides. “It’s a ritual practice. We say that at the concerts, we tell the audience that we welcome people in the spiritual practice of it all.

“It’s not something you can articulate. It just is,” he continues. “There’s a truth that is there from the beginning, and music alludes to it in a way that words cannot. It’s a feeling, that feeling of oneness that happens when you approach the climax of a great performance and people are leaving with a transformational, transcenden

See Full Page