Francis Baptiste — Music, Language, and Heritage

This episode with Francis Baptiste goes deeper than a story about getting back into music.

What comes through here is how music became part of a much bigger return. Francis talks about leaving a career in e-commerce, going through some hard years, and finding that music was one of the few things that helped him work through everything in a healthier way. But the conversation does not stay there. It opens out into family, heritage, language, and the question of what you carry forward.

Francis is not only talking about writing songs. He is talking about reconnecting with parts of himself that had been sitting further away for a long time. After the passing of his grandmother, and while raising his son, that connection to family and where he comes from started to feel more urgent.

A big part of that is language. Francis talks about learning Nsyilxcən (nah-silk-sen), the Okanagan language, and then bringing parts of it into his music. Not as decoration, but as something living. Something to learn, document, share with his son, and keep in motion. There is a really meaningful part in the episode where he explains that even after he is gone, those bits of language will still be there in the songs.

Music here is not only personal expression. It is memory, teaching, and a way of leaving something behind for future generations. Francis even talks about albums as snapshots of a certain year of his life, a way of documenting what it meant to be him, in that moment, in this place.

If you want to hear an artist talk about music in a way that reaches into family, identity, and legacy, this episode is for you.