Inside Jon Batiste & Suleika Jaouad’s Soul-Filled Brooklyn Home
Today AD is welcomed by Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad to tour their beautiful home in Brooklyn, New York. With multiple Grammys for Batiste’s album 'We Are' and Jaouad’s bestselling book, 'Between Two Kingdoms', this powerhouse couple wanted a home in which they could live and create simultaneously. After viewing close to 70 properties, it was an 1890s Brooklyn Italianate that finally felt like the One. Interior designer Hallie Goodman helped the couple create a soul-filled home, bringing together their Tunisian and New Orleanian roots in what they’ve penned the “Tunisiana” style. But what truly brought their home together was a wedding ceremony–mid-renovation, upon the return of Suleika’s leukemia, the couple tied the knot in their living room. And after a lengthy hospital stay spent scouring the web for thrifted treasures, Batiste and Jaouad’s home was finally ready for a proper homecoming. “I entered the hospital in winter. The day I was discharged was sunny and fully spring. I was weak, in need of a walker to get around, but I was so happy and relieved. As Jon and I made our way through the house, I had tears in my eyes—not just because it far exceeded our expectations. We had finally made it home.”Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad’s original documentary, 'American Symphony', directed by Matthew Heineman, a portrait of two inimitable artists at a crossroad and a profound meditation on art, love, and the creative process will be released by Netflix globally later this year. Batiste's latest album World Music Radio is now available.See more of Jon and Suleika's Brooklyn home here: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/jon-batiste-suleika-jaouad-home
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 [car honking]
00:02 Hello, I'm John.
00:08 - I'm Sulika Jawad.
00:09 - And this is our house.
00:11 Oh, and that's River.
00:12 You gotta get these tiles.
00:26 I'm looking at these tiles, this whole jewel box here,
00:29 right here, this little vestibule situation with the blue.
00:31 It's incredible.
00:32 It's like a spirit when you come in the house.
00:34 Oh my goodness.
00:35 Come on, let's go in the living room.
00:36 - Okay.
00:37 We were looking for a house
00:42 where we could both live and create.
00:45 And the very first thing that got me about this house
00:48 was the incredible ceilings,
00:50 and more specifically the tin ceilings up there.
00:53 - These ceilings were falling apart.
00:55 You know, like the old tin roof blues,
00:57 like pops used to say, "Bop, bop."
00:58 This had the blues, it was falling down.
01:01 - We also happened to get married
01:03 in this very living room a year ago
01:06 when the house was still empty,
01:07 right here in front of that mantle.
01:09 - We sat right here in the middle afterwards
01:11 and told stories underneath this recycled
01:14 water bottle chandelier.
01:16 The great Willie Cole is the artist who assembled this.
01:19 What else, what else?
01:20 - And I think it's a good symbol
01:22 of how we approach the rest of this house.
01:24 So many of the pieces in here are upcycled
01:27 or recycled or thrifted,
01:29 and that was really important to us.
01:32 - This house is Tunisia, Tunisia and Louisiana.
01:35 You see, she designed this, she's a genius.
01:37 This is why I love my wife, she's so incredible.
01:40 - But I also got to work with my dear friend,
01:43 Holly Goodman, who is an extraordinary writer and designer
01:48 and a fellow thrifter and scavenger of flea markets
01:52 and all the places where you can find soul.
01:55 We wanted objects that each tell a story,
01:57 including this painting by my very own mother
02:01 and these vintage posters, which belong to my grandfather.
02:04 - This is another thing sitting on the piano here
02:07 that I want to show you.
02:08 This is Sulika in high school playing the double bass.
02:12 That's how she looked when we met.
02:14 And this is in a practice room at Juilliard.
02:17 - We met at the world's most awkward place,
02:21 which is to say, band camp.
02:23 (upbeat music)
02:26 - We got married in this room and I'll never forget.
02:30 It was on the eve of when I was admitted
02:33 to the bone marrow transplant.
02:36 I've been in treatment for leukemia
02:38 for the last year and a half,
02:40 so it made it all the more special.
02:41 We had a couple of our closest friends
02:44 and John surprised me with a singer.
02:47 - He sung "Unforgettable" and I played the piano here
02:51 and it was just a beautiful thing
02:52 and that's what I like to do with the music part of it.
02:55 You know, friends will come and we'll set the drums up
02:58 right here and the bass will be right here
03:00 and horn players will be over there or in the kitchen
03:03 or on the staircase here and just stuff will happen
03:06 that you'll just remember forever.
03:08 That's what a home should be about, right?
03:10 (piano music)
03:13 (laughing)
03:18 (upbeat music)
03:21 - And we can't leave this room
03:23 without addressing Mr. Elephant,
03:26 the elephant bar which people have very strong reactions to
03:30 either positive or negative.
03:32 - Address the elephant in the room.
03:34 - That's right.
03:35 - You gotta address it.
03:36 (upbeat music)
03:39 - Before we ever even owned a home,
03:45 before that even felt like a possibility,
03:48 I knew that someday I wanted to have
03:50 Tunisian tiles in my home
03:52 and these were made by my friend Mokhtar.
03:54 They're hand painted, hand cut and beautifully imperfect.
03:59 We love imperfections here, we love flaws
04:02 and we're always looking for the beauty in them.
04:05 - Be who you are, you are enough.
04:07 (laughing)
04:08 (upbeat music)
04:10 - I also wanna give a shout out to Facebook Marketplace
04:13 because that's where probably 50% of the furniture
04:17 in this house is from, including this table,
04:20 including these chairs and then of course the madame.
04:24 She greets us every day and she's perfectly modest.
04:27 You wanna talk about the pink?
04:29 - Yeah, the pink is just thought it matched well
04:31 with the blue.
04:32 I thought it felt very human and very warm.
04:35 Well, you know, you take a bold choice
04:36 and sometimes it'll work out and you'll be connected
04:39 to something that's really powerful
04:41 within yourself and your family.
04:42 Other times you make a bold choice
04:44 and you just have to repaint it.
04:46 So we just went for it and I'm glad that we did.
04:50 (upbeat music)
04:52 - This is our guest room.
04:56 - It's where you will sleep.
04:58 (laughing)
04:59 If by the end of the night everything is still copasetic.
05:02 - This is an old bed I found in rural New Jersey
05:05 and we had it repainted.
05:07 This is a chair we found in upstate New York
05:10 in my hometown.
05:11 So this is a very special gramophone
05:15 from the Color Purple film set that was gifted to us
05:19 by the one and only.
05:21 - Oh, that's Oprah, Oprah Winfrey.
05:25 - No big deal.
05:26 (upbeat music)
05:28 And this is my beautiful bass.
05:34 - Play some.
05:35 (upbeat music)
05:38 (saxophone music)
05:40 (upbeat music)
05:50 - This is one of my very favorite bathrooms in the house.
05:58 It has these beautiful zealot tiles
06:00 that remind me of a hammam
06:02 that you might find in North Africa.
06:04 And we've got this beautiful salvage sink
06:07 and beautiful salvage old school tub.
06:10 And the most important detail,
06:12 which is a very niche problem
06:14 and that's when your husband wins many, many Grammys,
06:17 you run out of places to put them in the house.
06:20 So we've got one here to make our guests smile.
06:22 - I always think that this bathroom
06:24 feels like King Tut's bathroom.
06:27 (laughing)
06:29 You know, that's the vibe.
06:31 (upbeat music)
06:35 (saxophone music)
06:38 - Welcome to my office and to my painting studio.
06:43 Everything about this room is very personal to me,
06:47 from the salvage tiles to the weird little objects
06:50 that I've collected over time
06:52 that inspire me and my paintings.
06:55 And then the most important piece de resistance
06:58 is the giant fainting couch,
07:01 where I do a lot of writing and reading
07:04 and most importantly, napping.
07:06 - I think it's important to note
07:08 that all of these Sulayka originals
07:11 were painted in a hospital bed
07:15 and were inspired by visions,
07:17 almost fever dreams that she was having.
07:20 So to see them displayed here is also a story of triumph.
07:23 The thing that she overcame,
07:27 she almost in a way painted her way through it.
07:32 And that's an incredible testament to her art,
07:34 but also just the transcendence of that moment.
07:37 - You know, in this house,
07:38 we really believe that survival
07:41 is its own kind of creative process.
07:45 Frida Kahlo has been an inspiration to me
07:48 as someone who lives with chronic illness.
07:50 I'm really inspired by the way
07:52 that she took her own circumstances
07:55 and found creative workarounds for them.
07:57 She would paint from bed with an easel
08:00 that was gifted to her by her mom
08:02 and that she used as a kind of lap desk.
08:04 And so I do a version of that.
08:05 I have my own lap desk
08:07 and I work horizontal a lot of the time.
08:10 [upbeat music]
08:12 And this desk is really special to me.
08:20 It was a gift from John.
08:22 It belonged to one of my writer heroes,
08:25 Joan Didion.
08:26 But I also really believe in contagion magic,
08:30 which is the idea that objects are imbued
08:34 with their own stories and their own magic.
08:36 It's my prized possession.
08:38 It's also just something that I would have picked
08:41 out of a thrift store and fallen in love with regardless.
08:44 [upbeat music]
08:46 - You see, what I love about the dressing room
08:52 is that you have so much space
08:55 and we have so many items of clothing and shoes.
08:59 I never had this growing up.
09:01 So it was just a storm in my closet.
09:05 It was just everything, everywhere.
09:09 And I organized it as best I could,
09:11 but this is an incredible experience to have this.
09:15 This is truly a gift.
09:17 - So when we first moved in,
09:19 John said he wanted a piano in every single room
09:23 and we did our very best.
09:24 So we've got this tiny little instrument.
09:27 What's it called again, John?
09:28 - It's a chalice.
09:29 - And our theme for the year was family and freedom.
09:32 So that's what's on there.
09:33 [upbeat music]
09:36 [chimes ringing]
09:39 [upbeat music]
09:58 - We're bath people.
10:02 We like to take a bath every night.
10:04 And my favorite part about this bathtub
10:06 is that the tub is directly under the skylight.
10:10 And so when the moon is really bright,
10:12 you can actually see it from the tub.
10:15 And you can do that if you so wish.
10:18 [laughs]
10:20 [upbeat music]
10:22 Nighttime routine involves reading.
10:28 And I also love this little lounge chair
10:30 where we get to hang out.
10:32 But more than anything, it involves cuddling with our dog.
10:35 - Yeah, this is a pretty much sleep zone.
10:38 You know, try to keep it like that.
10:40 There's an incredible feeling when you can come to a place
10:42 and it's instructing you what it wants you to do.
10:45 And you gotta keep the energy like that.
10:47 - And we'd be remiss if we left this room
10:50 without talking about this baby,
10:51 which is an old screen door
10:53 that I found in a salvage yard in Pennsylvania
10:56 and very precariously strapped to the top of my car.
11:00 And we threw a mirror behind it.
11:03 And the person who put the mirror behind it
11:04 described it as a beautiful ghost, which I love.
11:07 - It's levels.
11:08 Oh, come on.
11:10 Let's get a shot of that.
11:12 It's got vibe.
11:13 [upbeat music]
11:16 Just take a deep breath, drink water.
11:20 Yeah, so if you want some water,
11:21 we got this incredible area over here.
11:24 This is the kitchenette that is outside of the studio lounge.
11:30 As you can see here, we have cups
11:34 and we have bowls and we have vinyl.
11:37 In particular, I always wanted to have a studio lounge
11:41 with a cookie oven because baking is really cool.
11:45 - And John is far too humble to point this out,
11:48 but obviously we've got all of his accolades
11:51 and his favorite space, which is the kitchenette.
11:53 - So like a place to all of these trophies.
11:56 And you know, I'm grateful for them,
11:59 but I find them everywhere.
12:02 They change position constantly.
12:05 - I like to surprise them,
12:06 so I put things in funny places to make them laugh.
12:09 - I was trying to act as if they were always there
12:12 for the camera, but I saw them and I was like,
12:15 oh snap, there they go.
12:16 So that's them.
12:18 [upbeat music]
12:20 This is the lounge.
12:27 This is where we participate in very deep conversation
12:31 or we'll have a movie night over here.
12:34 Or we'll, you know, I'll play games.
12:35 I'm a gamer, I'm addicted.
12:37 And I've played games from Final Fantasy VII,
12:41 which I believe is the greatest video game ever made.
12:44 You know, that's a bold claim.
12:45 I know, I know, I know.
12:46 There's many things that exist here
12:49 that happen in this space
12:51 and relaxation is chief among them.
12:54 We just come down and cool out from the studio.
12:57 We want to decompress,
12:58 we want to listen to some of the music,
12:59 listen to some vinyl, read some books.
13:02 There's an incredible collection of literature
13:04 that inspires me.
13:05 Yeah, this is a library of black excellence.
13:07 Basically, if you look at every single author
13:10 or subject of these books, you'll find black excellence
13:14 and that's something that's really important.
13:16 So Laika obviously has these ideas
13:19 that she sees in her mind's eye.
13:21 And I have ideas and we're trying to figure out
13:23 how to connect them.
13:24 And this room is really a manifestation
13:26 of so many of our ideas coming together
13:29 and finding harmony.
13:30 And, you know, I'm very, very proud of it.
13:32 - Mm.
13:33 [upbeat music]
13:35 All right, AD.
13:47 - We got it.
13:48 - It's been fun.
13:49 - Sky.
13:50 - We'll see you later.
13:51 - Jazz.
13:51 [laughs]
13:52 Skills.
13:53 Yeah, all right.
13:55 Go home.
13:57 I hope you didn't forget your shoes.
13:58 River, come on.
13:59 Come on, all right.
14:00 (door slams)
14:01 [BLANK_AUDIO]