Ryan “Shaggadelic” Batiste
Ryan Batiste, known as the artist Shaggadelic, was born into a classic New Orleans multi-generational musician family. With a funk-playing father (David Batiste Sr.) and three musical brothers (Jamal, Damon, and Russell Batiste, who passed in September 2023), he began learning instruments so early he doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t play. As a rapper, singer, drummer, pianist, composer, arranger, and teacher at Dorothy Height Charter School, Batiste brings art to the world through many platforms. Batiste released a dance album called Shaggs House last year. He fronts a band and brand called Raw Revolution, which he has kept going since high school. Batiste is also a member of the positivity-forward glbl wrmng collective and the founder of L.O.C.A.L.S. Fest, which is leveling up with bigger stages and more acts going into its sixth year.
You’re originally a drummer but you play how many other instruments, confidently?
I only really count them if I can play a certain song on ‘em or really articulate myself. I do know a few, though, seven or eight.
How many do you teach?
That’s where the extra ones come in, because I do the marching band at my school and I’m teaching them a little bit about trumpet, trombone, baritone, tuba, flute, a little bit of clarinet—all instruments that I am not proficient in, but I know a little bit, enough to get them started at an elementary level with.
You never know which instrument is going to spark that lifelong interest in a kid!
Exactly. Especially at these ages. I deal with pre-K through eighth grade.
What’s the youngest age at which you see them really showing their musicianship?
About third grade. There’s a kid I teach piano to and a few of them, actually, sprout out to be amazing, and it’s like, “Wow—y’all really got what I was tryna give to y’all.” And it’s an amazing thing to see.
You’ve been teaching for a decade now, plus you’ve got your own band, plus glbl wrmng. What’s the balance?
I think I started [teaching] in 2017, so yeah, it’s on the way. My band, which is now my brand, Raw Revolution, is mainly what I’m doing with the majority of my time. It used to be a collective, much like what glbl wrmng is now, but that was more in high school, when we didn’t have too much direction. Then everybody went their separate ways but I didn’t want to let it go. I wanted to keep it going, and I did.
What’s the role you inhabit in the glbl wrmng collective?
More than anything, [my role is] with production. I’ll get with Pell a bunch, we’ll come up with some music. The last single that we just released, “Somebody,” that was a tune that I worked on with Pell. And mainly on stage I’m on keys, when I’m available.
Do you compose most of your music on piano?
Oh yeah, 100%. I’ve got a bunch of keyboards where I get a decent amount of my sounds from. If I’m not making the sounds myself, I’m using the keyboards a bunch to build ideas for my productions.
Do you use keys even for drum ideas?
Recording live drums, you need the right space, the right acoustic environment, so I definitely do a lot of programming of drum sounds. Occasionally I’ll use a loop. I play drums, so I have a lot of ideas of how I would play it on the actual kit, so I just translate that into the DAW.
What is the keyboard that you think has the most versatility?
It could go a bunch of different ways. If you’re creating the sounds from scratch, just starting with a sawtooth wave or anything like that, then the [KORG] prologue-16 voice is nice, the Dave Smith Prophet Rev2 16-voice is nice. I got the [Roland] JUNO-X recently. I got a [Behringer] DeepMind 12, which is really fun, too. If you’re creating sounds from scratch, I would go with those boards, but if I’m using patches that may already be ready to roll, my JUNO-X is always good. The Yamaha MODX, that one’s a go-to because I can quickly switch from patch to patch.
Which is your most roadworthy synth?
The JUNO-X is my on-the-road keyboard. Unfortunately, I got a couple of scratches on my MODX, but those are my two that I take on the go right now.
Photo courtesy Ryan Batiste
What’s your go-to drum kit?
I need to get some new ones, but right now, one of my favorite kits is one of my older ones, my Pearl Export kit that I got right after Hurricane Katrina in the Musicians’ Care Fund, I feel like, from VH1. We received a nice little amount for me to get that drum set. To me, you can get an expensive one or a cheap one and it depends on your knowledge of how to tune it and how to play it, but I think my Pearl kit is one of my better sounding ones.
It must have taken all the other jobs and collectives in your life to have grown the skills to run L.O.C.A.L.S. Fest.
That one’s the heaviest load that I’ve got. It definitely takes a lot of time, a lot of commitment, but we get it done. All you gotta do is chip at it a day at a time and eventually things turn out. We’re going on year number six and it’s gonna be at Armstrong Park again. We’re gonna get ready to open the portal to bands who want to play. I go out on Frenchmen and see who’s playing all the time. We’re still waiting for clearance from Parks and Parkways. Then I gotta get with City Hall. Everything should be cool but, for me, it’s never cool until it’s on paper that it’s cool. We’re always looking towards how to make it bigger and better every year.
How do you set up the stages?
We go through Gulf South Productions and we recently upgraded to a 24 by 20 [foot], which is a bigger stage than we’ve used in the past, so that was a pretty cool upgrade. I want to get up to a 36 foot, or something like that. I think it would also be cool to have that as our main stage and put the [smaller one] in another space. We had two stages the very first year. I think it was a good idea, we just need to think it a little bit through, so we don’t split the audience too much, offset the times of the sets, and stuff like that. We make it easy for all of the artists and we backline all of the festival, so you don’t have to worry about travelling and parking. We have parking spaces allocated for musicians, and normally we backline through True South or somewhere like that. True South, they’ve done it a million times before, so the stuff that they have is pretty rock solid for all uses, basically.
Are you playing everything on Shaggs House?
Yeah, I make all of my own music, so all of the stuff that we’re doing is stuff that I produced and came up with myself; and all of the band arrangements, I have a pretty big hand in that as well… I am mainly using VSTs and different audio plugins. That, plus my keyboards, different drum pack loops that have different one shots, where you can get a high hat or a snare or a rim shot and throw an effect on it. That’s mainly what I’m doing. Sometimes I’ll start off with a groove, do the drums first, and put some chords on it; or sometimes I’ll come up with a melody and see where I can fit a groove in behind that. With the synth pads that I have, I really start off with a basic sawtooth sound and use the LFOs and the VCOs and affect the sounds from there and literally build them from scratch. Traditionally, I’ve done everything myself with the mixing and mastering.
Since your whole family plays music, I’d imagine you’ve been playing since you were a kid, but have you had a lot of teachers throughout your life?
I was in the gifted and talented, I did NOCCA, band, I did a bunch of different programs, the Louis Armstrong “Satchmo” Jazz Camp, and all of those teachers helped me to be where I am right now.
As a teacher, do you have advice for anyone who might want to start out on a musical journey similar to yours?
I equipped myself with music theory ‘cause that helps with building ideas and starting stuff from scratch. At least learning a level one basic [knowledge of] theory. Same with piano, ‘cause when you’re using patches, that all helps, and then playing around with different sounds, getting inspiration from wherever, and seeing what your mind can come up with. A lot of things come to me easy now that I know basic theory. If I can find out the fingering and how to play scales then I can figure out how to play this song, or that song. Then it’s like, once I know something on piano, then I can figure it out on flute.
For more info, check out linktr.ee/Shaggadelic504, glblwrmng.com, and localsfestnola.com.
Top photo: Batiste at L.O.C.A.L.S. Fest, September 2022
photo by James Cullen
Bottom photo courtesy Ryan Batiste
