Inside Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad’s 19th-Century Brooklyn Town House

[upbeat melodica music]

[chuckles] Hello, I'm Jon.

I'm Suleika Jaouad.

And this is our house.

Oh, and that's River.

[upbeat music]

You gotta get these tiles.

I'm looking at this tile, this whole jewel box here,

right here, this little vestibule situation with the blue.

It's incredible.

It's like a spirit when you come in the house.

Oh, my goodness.

[Suleika laughs]

Come on, let's go in the living room.

Okay.

[laid back music]

We were looking for a house

where we could both live and create,

and the very first thing that got me about this house

was the incredible ceilings,

and more specifically, the tin ceilings up there.

These ceilings were falling apart, you know,

like the old tin roof blues like pops used to say.

Bop, bop, this had the blues.

It was falling down. [Suleika laughs]

[Suleika] We also happened to get married

[Jon] in this very living room- Yes, we did.

A year ago when the house was still empty,

right here in front of that mantle.

[Jon] We sat right here in the middle afterwards

and told stories

underneath this recycled water bottle chandelier.

The great Willie Cole is the artist who assembled this.

What else, what else?

And I think it's a good symbol

of how we approach the rest of this house.

So many of the pieces in here

are upcycled or recycled or thrifted.

[Jon] Yeah.

[Suleika] And that was really important to us.

[Jon] This house is Tunisiana, Tunisia and Louisiana.

You see, she designed this.

She's a genius.

This is why I love my wife.

She's so incredible.

And I also got to work with my dear friend,

Hallie Goodman, who is an extraordinary writer and designer

and a fellow thrifter and scavenger of flea markets

and all the places where you can find soul.

We wanted objects that each tell a story,

including this painting by my very own mother,

and these vintage posters which belong to my grandfather.

This is another thing

sitting on the piano here [Suleika chuckles]

that I wanna show you. Oh, god.

This is Suleika in high school playing the double bass.

That's how she looked when we met,

and this is in a practice room at Julliard.

We met at the world's most awkward place,

which is to say band camp.

Mm-hmm.

[soft music]

We got married in this room, and I'll never forget,

it was on the eve of when I was admitted

to the bone marrow transplant.

I've been in treatment for leukemia

for the last year and a half,

so it made it all the more special.

We had a couple of our closest friends,

and Jon surprised me with a singer.

He sung Unforgettable.

And you know, I played the piano here,

and it was just a beautiful thing,

and that's what I like to do with the music part of it.

You know, friends will come and we'll set the drums up

right here, and the bass will be right here,

and horn players will be over there or in the kitchen

or on the staircase here, and just stuff will happen

that you'll just remember forever.

That's what a home should be about, right?

[soft piano music]

[Jon laughs]

[upbeat music]

And we can't leave this room

without addressing Mr. Elephant, the elephant bar

which people have very strong reactions to,

either positive or negative.

Address the elephant in the room.

That's right.

You gotta address it.

[upbeat music]

Before we ever even owned a home,

before that even felt like a possibility,

I knew that someday,

I wanted to have Tunisian tiles in my home.

And these were made by my friend Mokhtar.

They're hand painted, hand cut, and beautifully imperfect.

We love imperfections here.

We love flaws,

and we're always looking for the beauty in them.

Be who you are!

You are enough!

[Suleika laughs]

[upbeat music]

I also wanna give a shout out to Facebook Marketplace

because that's where probably 50% of the furniture

in this house is from,

including this table, including these chairs.

And then of course, the madam.

She greets us every day, and she's perfectly modest.

You wanna talk about the pink?

Yeah, the pink is just,

I thought it matched well with the blue.

I thought it felt very human and very warm.

You know, you take a bold choice

and sometimes it'll work out

and you'll be connected to something

that's really powerful within yourself and your family.

Other times, you make a bold choice

and you just have to repaint it.

So, [Suleika laughs]

we just went for it, and I'm glad that we did.

[laid back music]

This is our guest room.

It's where you'll sleep

[Suleika laughs]

if by the end of the night, everything is still copacetic.

[Suleika] This is an old bed I found in rural New Jersey,

and we had it repainted.

This is a chair we found in upstate New York,

in my hometown.

[Jon] So this is- You wanna talk-

[Suleika] A very special gramophone-

[Jon] Mm-hmm.

From The Color Purple film set

that was gifted to us by the one and only...

Oh, that's Oprah, Oprah Winfrey.

No big deal.

[laid back music]

And this is my beautiful bass.

[Jon] Play something.

[soft music]

[laid back music]

This is one of my very favorite bathrooms in the house.

It has these beautiful Zellige tiles that remind me

of a hammam that you might find in North Africa.

And we've got this beautiful salvaged sink

and beautiful salvaged old school tub.

And the most important detail,

which is a very niche problem,

and that's when your husband wins many, many Grammys,

you run out of places to put them in the house,

so we've got one here to make our guests smile.

I always think that this bathroom

feels like King Tut's bathroom.

[Suleika laughs]

You know, that's the vibe.

[laid back music]

Welcome to my office and to my painting studio.

Everything about this room is very personal to me,

from the salvaged tiles,

to the weird little objects that I've collected over time

that inspire me and my paintings.

And then the most important piece de resistance

is the giant fainting couch

where I do a lot of writing and reading,

and most importantly, napping.

I think it's important to note

that all of these Suleika originals

were painted in a hospital bed and were inspired by visions,

almost fever dreams that she was having.

So to see them displayed here is also a story of triumph.

The thing that she overcame, she almost,

in a way, painted her way through it.

And that's an incredible testament to her art,

but also just the transcendence of that moment.

You know, in this house, we really believe

that survival is its own kind of creative process.

Frida Kahlo has been an inspiration to me

as someone who lives with chronic illness.

I'm really inspired by the way

that she took her own circumstances

and found creative workarounds for them.

She would paint from bed with an easel

that was gifted to her by her mom,

and that she uses a kind of lap desk,

and so I do a version of that.

I have my own lap desk,

and I work horizontal a lot of the time.

[laid back music]

And this desk is really special to me.

It was a gift from Jon.

It belonged to one of my writer heroes, Joan Didion.

But I also really believe in contagion magic,

which is the idea that objects are imbued

with their own stories and their own magic.

It's my prized possession.

It's also just something

that I would've picked out of a thrift store

and fallen in love with regardless.

[laid back music]

You see, what I love about the dressing room

is that you have so much space.

And we have so many items of clothing and shoes.

I never had this growing up,

so it was just a storm in my closet.

[Suleika laughs]

It was just everything everywhere.

And you know, I organized it as best I could,

but, you know, this is an incredible experience

to have this, you know?

This is truly a gift.

So when we first moved in,

Jon said he wanted a piano in every single room,

and we did our very best.

So we've got this tiny little instrument.

What's it called again, Jon?

[Jon] It's a Celeste.

And our theme for the year was family and freedom,

so that's what's on there.

[soft piano music]

[laid back music]

We're bath people.

We like to take a bath every night.

And my favorite part about this bathtub

is that the tub is directly under the skylight.

And so when the moon is really bright,

you can actually see it from the tub.

And you can do that if you so wish. [laughs]

[laid back music]

Nighttime routine involves reading,

and I also love this little lounge chair

where we get to hang out.

But more than anything, it involves cuddling with our dog.

Yeah, this is a pretty much sleep zone, you know?

Try to keep it like that.

There's an incredible feeling when you can come to a place

and it's instructing you what it wants you to do,

and you gotta keep the energy like that.

And we'd be remiss if we left this room

without talking about this baby, which is an old screen door

that I found in a salvage yard in Pennsylvania

and very precariously strapped to the top of my car,

and we threw a mirror behind it.

And the person who put the mirror behind it

described it as a beautiful ghost, which I love.

It's levels.

Oh, come on.

Let's get a shot of that.

It's got vibe.

[laid back music]

♪ Just take a deep breath, drink water ♪

Yeah, so we got...

If you want some water,

we got this incredible area over here.

This is the kitchenette

that is outside of the studio lounge.

As you can see here, we have cups,

and we have bowls, and we have vinyl.

In particular, I always wanted to have a studio lounge

with a cookie oven, because baking is really cool.

And Jon is far too humble to point this out,

but obviously, we've got all of his accolades

in his favorite space, which is the kitchenette.

Suleika placed all of these trophies.

[Suleika laughs]

And, you know, I'm grateful for them,

but I find them everywhere.

They change position constantly.

I like to surprise him,

so I put things in funny places to make him laugh.

I was trying to act as if they were always there

for the camera, [Suleika laughs]

but I saw 'em and I was like, Oh, snap, there they go.

So that's them.

[upbeat music]

This is the lounge.

This is where we participate in very deep conversation,

or we'll have a movie night over here, or we'll...

You know, I'll play games.

I'm a gamer, I'm addicted.

And I've played games from Final Fantasy VII,

which I believe is the greatest video game ever made.

You know, that's a bold claim.

I know, I know, I know. [chuckles]

There's many things that exist here

that happen in this space,

and relaxation is chief among them.

We just come down and cool off from the studio.

We wanna decompress.

We wanna listen to some of the music, listen to some vinyl,

read some books,

an incredible collection of literature that inspires me.

Yeah, this is a library of Black excellence.

Basically, if you look at every single author

or subject of these books, you'll find Black excellence,

and that's something that's really important.

Suleika obviously has these ideas

that she sees in her mind's eye, and I have ideas,

and we're trying to figure out how to connect them.

And this room is really a manifestation

of so many of our ideas coming together and finding harmony,

and, you know, I'm very, very proud of it.

[laid back music]

All right, AD.

Biyah!

It's been fun.

Ska!

We'll see you later.

Jazz!

[Suleika laughs]

Skittles!

Yeah, all right.

Go home.

I hope you didn't forget your shoes.

River, come on, come on.

All right.