By TERESA WILTZ
THE WASHINGTON POST
NEW YORK -- Backstage at Madison Square Garden, Matisyahu cuts a striking figure, more rabbinical than reggae, 6 feet 3, all Talmudic beard and zizit fringe, shaking hands with the men, smiling at the women, saying, yes, yes, hopefully, one day soon, he'll be the one headlining. God willing.
Just minutes before, he was onstage, rapping and beatboxing, singing praises, bouncing like Bob Marley. Folks in this mostly white crowd of college kids were standing in their seats, arms in the air, jamming to the beat. Hollering. Not a bad way to debut at the Garden, especially for an opening act with an unusual concept -- a Hasidic reggae singer.
Now Matisyahu's working a different kind of performance: the industry Meet & Greet. He's making his rounds, navigating the terrain between religion and ambition, dodging potholes. For example: He's presented with a preteen fan, her dad wielding a disposable camera. The girl grins hopefully. Would he? Sure. But just before the camera clicks, she slips in closer to Matisyahu -- and he ever so slightly arches his lean frame away from the girl's, carving vital inches of space between their bodies.
The life of a charismatic rapper-singer with crossover dreams and spiritual convictions poses its challenges.
Matisyahu (born Matthew Miller) has been dubbed the "Hasidic reggae superstar," a pat moniker of which he's none too fond. It's an easy shorthand for a complex man, reducing the performer to a punch line. Still, the 26-year-old has always wanted to be a star, ever since he was a fractious teen growing up in a secular household in the New York suburbs. Right now, that star is on the ascendant: His third album, Youth, dropped this week; his sophomore CD, Live at Stubb's, has been No. 1 on Billboard's reggae chart for the past five weeks, beating out dancehall king Sean Paul. Right now, Matisyahu can be spotted on MTV, a Hasidic hunk dancing against an animated backdrop in his video King Without a Crown.
In recent days, he's appeared on Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel and Conan O'Brien, and he's touring 32 cities this winter. Mike D from the Beastie Boys is doing a remix for King, and Dave Matthews has asked him to go on tour with him.
"He has everything going for him," says Joshua Neuman, whose New York-based magazine, Heeb, profiled him in 2004. "Talent, good people surrounding him, and a good head on his shoulders. Looks. And values."
About those Friday-night gigs . . .
Matisyahu is an Orthodox Jew following the strict Lubavitch Hasidic tradition. So if that means turning down a Friday night gig, so be it. If that means not touring with Shakira on a stadium tour through Latin America because his rabbis say performing with a female singer is forbidden, so be it. If that means subsisting on turkey sandwiches because finding kosher restaurants in Finland or Jamaica is tough, then turkey sandwiches it is.
He does this because, as he sees it, he has what he has because he puts God first.
"It's an amazing thing, a phenomenon, when a person is willing to give themselves over to something else," Matisyahu says softly, in a lilting voice that reflects both his White Plains, N.Y., roots and the accent of the rabbis he studies with.
"That's what real passion is . . . and that passion comes through a divorce of self. . . . And the way to do that is to give yourself over to something greater."
Still, he says, he's not out to convert anyone with his music. He's just journaling his life experiences through his lyrics.
He started performing as Matisyahu (a Hebrew version of "Matthew") in 2002, and early in this incarnation he decided that he didn't want to be put in a religious box. There was easy money to be made performing for Jewish organizations; instead, he chose performing at secular clubs starting in 2002 for "100 bucks a night." It hurt his pocket, but that was the way it had to be.
After all, he says, Orthodox Judaism was never meant to separate you from the world.
"You embrace life," he says, "while living a powerful, elevated lifestyle."
"I don't see myself as a religious musician," Matisyahu says. "I'm not trying to make myself more marketable or more mainstream. My music, and my message, is more marketable. . . . It's just a matter of getting it out there."
Getting it out there is the task of his management team, Jacob Harris and Aaron Bisman, of J-Dub Records.
At first, Harris says, when they laid out Matisyahu's rules of engagements to concert booking agents -- no Friday night shows or Saturday matinees -- they were told, "Good luck to you." Since he wouldn't play the two nights when it's easiest to fill a house, his guarantees -- the flat performance fees based on promoters' estimates of how many tickets they could sell -- were half what they could have been. But bit by bit, thanks largely to the word of mouth of the college crowd, he built an audience. The sold-out shows led to a record deal with Epic last year. Now, Matisyahu's in demand, but his managers are careful about overexposure. They checked out the reggae/rap careers of one-hit wonders like Afroman (Because I Got High) and Snow (The Informer). They decided that "Matis" wouldn't be a novelty act.
In other words, "we've taken a hard line on marketing," Harris says. They turn down a lot: A Burger King commercial, because he didn't want to promote non-kosher food. Reality TV shows. Howard Stern.
"People want him to make fun of himself," Harris says, "and it's just not going to happen."
"He's not a rapping rabbi," he adds. "He's a reggae singer and he mixes in rock and hip-hop. He's a Hasidic individual, a spiritual individual."
But his was not always the observant life.
An arty life, a Marley life
Matisyahu grew up in a relatively secular household in White Plains, the oldest child of liberal Jews. As a high school junior, on a trip to the Colorado wilderness, out in the woods, he felt a spiritual union that bordered on the mystical. He found rap. The lyrics rocked him. The beat did, too.
He got into reggae and Bob Marley, locking his hair and connecting with the message in the music: Find strength in yourself.
Matisyahu plunged into the arts, music and theater in college at New York's New School. Mystical themes dominated his art. He was a musician without a band, a spiritual seeker without a religion.
"I was looking for a way to fill the gap or hole in my life ... to glue all the pieces of my life together in one common focus."
Two experiences provided the glue: He started attending the Carlebach Shul, an Upper West Side synagogue with a focus on ecstatic music. And one day, in Washington Square Park, he met Rabbi Dov Yonah Korn, who was proselytizing as part of the Chabad movement, an outreach branch of Judaism dedicated to turning Jews on to their religious roots.
Under Korn's guidance, Matisyahu took on the accouterments of Orthodox Judaism. The kid who eschewed all rules became the man who embraced regulation.
Matt became Matisyahu.
He met musician Aaron Dugan -- a fellow New School student -- two years ago at a club gig. The two hit it off immediately, Matisyahu writing lyrics, Dugan crafting tunes.
A first album, Shake Off the Dust . . . Arise, was released in 2004. MTVU, a version of MTV aired exclusively on campuses, played the live version of King Without a Crown, and university students voting online ranked him No. 1 on the show The Dean's List. He held that rank for months.
"His music is just connecting at a moment where eclecticism is prized more than ever," says Ross Martin, head of programming for MTVU. "His message is one of unification. . . . It's broad enough that people from all walks of life can connect."
Matisyahu
8 p.m. Wednesday
Nokia Theatre
Grand Prairie
$25.50
Metro (972) 647-5700
March 15th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Steven, thanks for saying what needed to be said.
On the place of yeshivish accents in the culture of Baalei Teshuvah, see HUC professor Sarah Bunin Benor’s PhD thesis, which is entitled The Cultural Socialization of Newly Orthodox Jews (2004). Also cf. her brief writeup on “Jewish English” at ...
March 15th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Jews really need to start toning down their anti Christian rhetoric. Its becoming quite irresponsible.
March 15th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
I confess to being way behind on Mr M. So to remedy that I bought the new CD yesterday and listened to it on the the road from Teaneck to 59th street and park this morning.
It is seriously good music - very well produced. And it is completely infused with Jewish content. Maybe you have to be Orthodox to know how much Jewish content is there and where it all resonates -but I think even so - you have to be a total blind deaf mute to miss the Jewishness and musical excellence of the album.
Bravo, bravo, bravo. Now Mr. M has to watch his step — stay away from the roller coaster of drugs and the other scripted stories of MTV and VH1 - young guy makes it big — falls down into depravity — pulls self back up again — or flames out of existence.
Meanwhile we have some good Jewish pop music — finally!!!!
March 15th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
let Slate and Rosen know what you think–email or snail-mail them
March 15th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
Picked out from the haze surrounding Rosen’s head is the argument that Matisyahu’s tapping into a long-standing and valuable Jewish tradition of blackface. I don’t think it’s worth getting into why blackface isn’t/wasn’t a good thing, and how it’s certainly not part of a continuous Jewish tradition that is still influencing Jewish art today; even if the conditions of both were favorable to Rosen’s argument, in what world would Matisyahu have been influenced by it?
First of all, blackface is not synonymous with minstrelsy. Matisyahu does not engage in stereotyping or mockery; his form of blackface is genuine imitation and entirely appropriate for a genre-crossing musician. And as un-PC as it may sound, blackface has in fact been a large influencing force in shaping American Jewish music. I wrote about this recently on my blog (March 2: “Jewish Blackface”) and I believe it’s a big part of who Matisyahu has become. His music is less appreciable without this historical perspective.
Which world do you think Matisyahu inhabits that he could possibly come into his own as a musician without exposure to previous Jewish musicians who engaged in black art? His style is indeed unique, but it’s not a spontaneous outgrowth that is completely original. Much of his musical influences are Jewish musicians who were heavily influenced, if less overtly, by black music. That makes Matisyahu a non-novelty and leaves him to be judged on the merit of his music alone (which I think would do him some good, but others may disagree).
March 15th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
I’m Haaretz — Of course Matisyahu doesn’t engage in stereotyping or mockery; that’s part of why Rosen’s comparison is so poor and offensive.
I don’t know which “Jewish musicians who engaged in black art” you think he’s influenced by, but a Phish-head-cum-Rasta-lover is a type of which there are a great many thousands, and for which Matisyahu required no Jewish influence to become.
I don’t know who these “Jewish musicians” you think were his influences are, but I highly doubt he was significantly influenced by anyone mentioned in your post.
Your post adds nothing of value to the discussion.
March 15th, 2006 at 8:00 pm
Matisyahu’s signature sound is something that comes from a musical education that he got before he put any value whatsoever on his Jewishness. So speaking of those influences is a moot point.
However, once he entered the musical scene in the role of a hasidic reggae star, he then assumed the larger role of ‘Jewish musician in a primarily black genre’. People like to make much of it, more than is worthy; he is not the first Jew, and certainly not the first white man to succeed in musically crossing racial and religious boundaries. And like you said, he’s just one of many dead-heads in dreds (which explains the built in audience).
The names in my post and in Rosen’s article are not influences, but rather predecessors. They paved the way for a Matisyahu to appear; they made his position available. Treating him as an independent and entirely original concept overlooks the tradition that he has consciously become a part of. I don’t see any purpose in disregarding his position in the Jewish musical trajectory and the history behind him.
March 15th, 2006 at 11:01 pm
Jews really need to start toning down their anti Christian rhetoric. Its becoming quite irresponsible.
Halivai. Too many Jews go running into the arms of Christian believers without remembering Christian believers await the Rapture - and that doesn’t end well or the Jews. Rosen is right when he says Jews should keep away from them.
Also, Rosen DID understand the Psalm. The huh didn’t mean he didn’t recognize it. It means he thinks Matisyahu’s paraphrase was stupid. Really, Weiss, pay attention to context.
March 16th, 2006 at 12:42 am
I’m Haaretz - So because some Jews were some of the non-blacks who partook in some of the playing of some black-originated music, Matisyahu, who has essentially no relation to any of them, is now part of their tradition? That doesn’t make much sense. If he or his audience were involving those elements in the discussion, there might be a point to what you’re talking about.
Jimmy - Where is P.O.D. talking about supporting Jews and Israel towards the fulfillment of an end-times prophecy? That’s the key element missing from so many items like Rosen’s, that play fast and loose with Christian theology.
As to Rosen’s getting the psalm, I don’t see it, and Rosen gives no indication of such, while giving ample indication in the reverse; the lyric is so close to a verbatim translation that such puzzlement has no place within that context you’re touting. I’m not the only one to read Rosen this way, and the onus would be on you to show how Rosen indicates the knowledge you’re claiming he has; it doesn’t appear to me he has it.
March 16th, 2006 at 1:40 am
So because some Jews were some of the non-blacks who partook in some of the playing of some black-originated music, Matisyahu, who has essentially no relation to any of them, is now part of their tradition?
Do you have to reduce ad absurdum? Isn’t there a valid point to discussing context? Matisyahu doesn’t have to come out and say “I am influenced by…” in order to be circumstantially related. He is part of a tradition, and his actions and music must be judged accordingly. This is a new brand of an already existent fusion. If your only concern is how many albums he’ll sell in the next few weeks then it’s unimportant, but if you’re interested in what’s “good/bad for the Jews” then broader questions need to be asked.
If he or his audience were involving those elements in the discussion, there might be a point to what you’re talking about.
Matisyahu and his audience are confronted with these questions everyday; the media can’t get enough of playing up the race factor and exoticizing his religion, i.e. “could a white, hasidic, jewish guy actually perform reggae?”. So yeah, it *is* relevant. I’m not simplifying this so I can say that Matisyahu is just another Al Jolson or Beastie Boy–I have no reason to. But what could possibly be your reason for completely rejecting this context and musical history (besides an obvious dislike for Jody Rosen’s ideas)?
March 16th, 2006 at 9:00 am
I’m Haaretz - But your context is no context. He’s not part of a tradition as you state. If he’s part of any tradition of fusion, it’s of a jam-band tradition that incorporates various influences including reggae, like Sublime, or that involves more hip-hop in the genre, like 311. There’s nothing about your post or Rosen’s article that connects Matisyhau to the “tradition” you’re claiming other than the most superficial elements of who he is and the art he’s making. As to a discussion of “good/bad for the Jews”: firstly, that’s almost always asked and answered in the most stupid fashion, and as such is almost universally irrelevant; secondly, the world of art today doesn’t involve such questions in the way you and Rosen seek to ask them — and the two of you aren’t asking it in the same way, though both of you ask them in ways that are completely apart from reasonable Jewish or artistic concerns.
Re: being “confronted with these questions everyday,” that’s patently false. The question of race has only become one in two essays of recent vintage: Sanneh’s and Rosen’s, and both were wrong-headed. The novelty of Matisyahu is not his whiteness (because Gentleman is white) and it’s not his Jewishness (because Sean Paul is Jewish); his novelty stems from his being an Orthodox Jew and Hasid, which are groups that are quite specifically not expected — by the broader population if not within their sects — to incorporate outside cultural elements such as reggae into their lives; and when they become performers for the public on top of that, it’s a very specific cultural curiosity. It’s why Gawker makes a big deal of David Lavon, and why Gothamist posts video of rapping at a Tu B’shvat seder.
My reason for completely rejecting this context and musical history in the context of Matisyahu is that it’s irrelevant, and that making it relevant seems quite naturally to lead to arguments like Rosen’s.
March 16th, 2006 at 11:57 am
The connections I made are obviously based on circumstantial aspects of Matisyahu rather than anything essential to the music. Rosen’s piece tries to write off Matisyahu based on these connections; I to the contrary say historical perspective can only enrich the experience. Being Orthodox adds to his intrigue, not just because of his observance, but because it is an open and extreme display of Jewishness. So my model still applies.
And just to make things clear- I only used the abominable phrase, “good/bad for the Jews” because you asked the question in your Forward article (which btw egregiously mislabels Matisyahu as a rapper?!). I personally think that making value judgments on reality is inconsequential and totally unproductive. He’s going to do what’s good for him, and rightfully so; but just the same, we can try and fit him into our cultural landscape.
All in all, I realize that people are more inclined to side with you. I once ran my ideas by Matisyahu’s (former) manager and he basically said–somewhat extraneous but interesting to note. Believe it or not, that was the answer I wanted to hear: even though it’s not an overwhelming consideration, it is something that should be said.
(BTW, if Sean Paul is Jewish, then so is Jerry Garcia. It isn’t so clear and he definitely doesn’t carry it with him, so it hardly counts.)
March 16th, 2006 at 11:59 am
Can a white goy sing the Jews?
It might be interesting to get Don Byron’s take on Matisyahu. Byron is a noted klezmer clarinetist who is black and not Jewish. Though Byron’s novelty has been noted, as far as I know not a single review or critic has questioned the authenticity of his music because he comes from a different cultural tradition. Does anyone question the ability of Yo Yo Ma to interpret the music of 18th century Christian Europeans? When Aretha Franklin sang the aria “Nessum Dorma” at the Grammy awards a few years back nobody accused her of appropriating an inflection from another culture.
It’s only when members of a perceived to be privileged group embrace the culture of others that the issues of cultural expropriation, wannabes, and poseurs arise.
Very little music on this planet is culturally pristine. One of the things that makes Jewish music so rich is the many influences of the various musical cultures we have been exposed to in the diaspora. Klezmer has ‘turkishers’ and ‘bulgars’. In my shul on Simchat Torah, we use a ‘niggun’ taught to us by a Sephardi rabbi that has sections with clear Spanish influence and other parts that are much more Arabic sounding.
Blues is not African. It’s American, the result of musical cultures coming together. The guitar is Spanish. Hell, the blues scale is *similar* to the west African scale used in Mali, but not identical. In the 1830s in Germany a guy named Matthais Hohner developed what we today call the harmonica. A “free reed” instrument (an accordion is a harmonica on steroids), it’s generally believed that Hohner and other harmonica pioneers were influenced by the Sheng, a Chinese instrument brought back to Europe by traders as a novelty. Soon Hohner was making millions of harmonicas. The instrument’s low cost made it accessible to southern rural blacks in the US. They brought with them African musical traditions like drone instruments and note bending and what we now call the blues scale with its flatted notes. Someone discovered that changing the emboucher allows a harmonica player to change pitch and play notes not in the original layout of the harp, particularly the flatted notes that give the blues scale its emotional expressiveness, the so-called “blue notes”. So in this example of how music really develops and lives, a German instrument based on a Chinese concept is found to be an ideal instrument to play the amalgam of African and English folk musics that we now know as the blues. And Muddy said that the harmonica was “the mother of the blues”.
None of this business about Matisyahu’s authenticity is new. In the 1960s, black nationalists complained that the music industry was “exploiting” black musicians (while royalties from Cream’s cover of I’m So Glad paid for Skip James’ cancer surgery). Rich Cohen’s book about Leonard Chess and Chess Records, Rockers & Machers, describes the era when (mostly) Jewish businessmen stopped selling black music due to threats from black activists. Of course, the fact that Leonard Chess hired Willie Dixon as the first black record executive in the US or the fact that Chess and other landsmen made it possible for much of that art to find an audience was ignored. Leonard was derided as the rich Jew who kept the musicians on a plantation. Marshal Chess says (paraphrased), ‘you can call my father a “plantation owner”, but what the musicians my father worked with wanted was a song on the radio, because if you had a song on the radio you could get work at $350 a night and drive a Cadillac with a fine bitch at your side, and my father got their songs on the radio.’ Chess also points out that a song that his father produced and distributed, Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode, is on the gold plated record mounted on the Explorer spacecract that has left the solar system looking for signs of life elsewhere in the universe - “not bad for a Jewish boy from Poland”.
Bob Dylan, I think, addresses the ‘can a white boy sing the blues?’ issue in his masterpiece Blind Willie McTell. The song is musically evocative of gospel, with lyrical allusions to slavery and Dylan’s own Jewish background. The refrain goes “and nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell”, and it’s almost as if Bob is winking at us because he knows how powerful his own song is. Perhaps nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell, but nobody has written a song about Blind Willie like Dylan.
March 16th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Garcia was not Jewish. His mom’s family are not Jews. I could dig out a couple books, but I’m pretty sure his mom’s family were Irish. His father’s family were, I believe, Spanish rather than Mexican.
I’m pretty sure that Jerry’s first wife was Jewish and I think he had a child with her.
The evidence that Elvis was halachicly Jewish, however, is a bit stronger.
March 16th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
Steven, that would be a great thread, btw, Jews in popular music. Lieber & Stoller, Doc Pomus, the Brill Building, Mike Bloomfield a’h', how much taste the A&M label had, etc. etc.
March 16th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Rosen may be a joke, but he’s a professional journalist. All you have is a lame blog.
March 16th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
charlie bitton-
All he has is a lame blog…and news articles for the Forward, Wall Street Journal, JTA, New York Magazine….
March 16th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
I don’t recall UB-40 or The Police being knocked for not being “authentic”, nor John Brown’s Body more recently. The only explanation for the Slate and NYT reviews is anti-semitism and self-loathing in Rosen’s case.