About three-quarters of the way through the 21 tracks on this album, Jon Batiste’s first since he won five Grammy Awards—including album of the year—for 2021s We Are, and first since leaving his seven-year, star-making gig in New York as band leader and sidekick on Late Night with Stephen Colbert, comes “Movement 18’.”

It starts with Batiste solemnly reciting the Lord’s Prayer, followed by archival audio clips of heroes Wayne Shorter, Duke Ellington, Quincy Jones and Batiste’s teacher and family member Alvin Batiste, sharing thoughts on music and life. To close this collage, Batiste spotlights an old TV interview bit of Ellington sparring with an interviewer, who asks him where he got his ideas: “I got a million dreams,” the composer says. “It’s all I do, is dream all the time.” “I thought you played piano,” the interviewer responds. “No,” Ellington insists. “No this is not a piano. This is dreaming.”

And so is this album. It has to be a dream, right? There is so much going on, moving from one fantastical moment to another, from expansive light to haunted shadows. There’s reggaeton bump. There are hymns. There’s jazzy soul. There’s hard R&B and hip-hop.

There are artists from South Korea (the girl group NewJeans, singing in Korean), from Spain (singer-trombonist Rita Payés, in Spanish), from Colombia (singer Camilo, also in Spanish), from France (Christophe Chassol, in, yes, French, on a short piece on which Batiste doesn’t even appear), from England (singer Leigh-Anne, of Barbadian and Jamaican heritage), from Iran (Mehrnam Rastegari, a rare woman master of the fiddle-like kamancheh), from Atlanta (rapper J.I.D) and, of course, New Orleans (Lil Wayne, declaring, “Me and Mr. Batiste, Lil weezyana!”). Whew! There’s one song that you’d have to describe as cowboy-gospel—“Master Power,” and it’s a blast. Even Kenny G and Lana Del Rey show up!

There’s buoyantly jokey Billy Bob Bo Bob, an alter-ego DJ chiming in now and then as if this were all a radio broadcast. In that vein, there’s an interlude with Batiste’s father, Michael, known as a bass-player but here joining in vocally on “CALL NOW (504-305-8269).” Go ahead, call it. We’ll wait.

A dream, sure. But it is Jon Batiste’s reality, the way he sees the world, the way he lives. Incongruous? It’s inconceivable to him. In the liner notes he says he feels liberated, in part from leaving the Colbert gig that, as amazing as it was, tethered him somewhat. And he sounds it. The songs flow, one to the next, with ease, with naturalness and, yes, with the joy we all associate with Batiste. But there’s more, much more. Themes of being true, true to yourself and your family and friends, your city and your community, being there when needed, being there when you are in need. It’s about home. Batiste celebrates, outwardly. He contemplates, inwardly. He’s playful. He’s prayerful.

Ultimately, though, it’s all prayer, of gratitude and of pain. At the heart of the album is the experience he had while making it: his wife had a recurrence of a life-threatening cancer she’d had in her youth and had to deal with brutal medical treatments and deep uncertainty. (She got through it and is doing well now). Batiste’s own existential crises from this thread through every moment of the album, sometimes explicitly.

“I know you prayed for a way in the wilderness,” he sings to her in the soulful “Wherever You Are.” “You’re my star, wherever you are. Hold onto the light and it will be alright, wherever you are.”

Even these introspective moments, moments born of bleakness and fear, and there are many, bear witness to his open heart, open mind and embrace of a world of ever-increasing wonder and ever-growing love. That is truly the world of this World Music Radio. Jon Batiste’s world.

Which brings us to the last word on the album, at the end of “Life Lesson,” a duet and co-write with Del Rey, whose verses of betrayal, frankly, make for perplexing contrasts with Batiste’s spirit of loyalty and faith. It is the latter, though, which rules in the final utterance:

“Amen.”