Slate Gets Stupid on Matisyahu
From the Great SIW
It takes a special brand of idiocy to do what Jody Rosen’s done with Matisyahu. In the space of one paragraph, he announces “there is very little distinctly Jewish content on Youth,” then allows that what little Jewish reference exists is “a nonsensical riff on the Bible’s most beautiful poem of exile, the 137th Psalm.” Continuing in the paragraph, Rosen reveals he doesn’t really know even that psalm, because when he quotes a Matisyahu line that is for the most part a transcription of a verse in that psalm (”Jerusalem, if I forget you/ Let my right hand forget what it’s supposed to do”), he fails to realize it’s a quote, simply responding “Huh?”
With that in the heart of the review (and we’ll leave aside Rosen’s non sequitur assumption that “distinctly Jewish content” would naturally consist of “invocation of the idea of Jewish nationhood”), you know you’re in for some fun in a trip down Stupid Lane.
Rosen spends two paragraphs in a sort of otherworldly ignorance that outpaces Kelefa Sanneh’s for likelihood of drug influence. 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?
But on a plain analysis, Matisyahu’s act is no more minstrelsy than is any other musical artist who inflected his voice to achieve a specific effect, and the list of those is immensely long.
The reasonable question, as we’ve discussed before, is to ask why Matisyahu feels the need to use a Jamaican accent to sing reggae; is it inherently part of the medium? In the same way, again as before, it’s reasonable to ask why yeshivish/Brooklyn/hasidic accents have become part of the rest of his dialect, as it has for countless “white boy” yeshiva students before him; is it inherently part of that culture?
Of course, such questions don’t get asked by someone with Rosen’s capabilities.
And this is all before a rambling conclusion that is the most profoundly outlandish take on Matisyahu you’ll have seen:
That emphasis on self-actualization and uplift, combined with Matisyahu’s ceaseless diatribes about the moral impurity of secular life, is reminiscent of nothing so much as Christian rock. It’s a reminder that Orthodox Jewish fundamentalists share a lot with their Christian counterparts, including political priorities—and that there’s no one quite so beloved of the Left Behind crowd these days than Orthodox Jews, whose in-gathering in Israel is essential stage setting for the coming of the Rapture. (At which point, presumably, Jews will be cast into the hellfire.) As if to make explicit the burgeoning alliance, Matisyahu recently recorded “Play MediaRoots in Stereo,” a duet with evangelical rap-rockers P.O.D. It’s a cruddy piece of music and, as politics, it can’t be good for the Jews.
It’s just so laughable when Jews continue to insert an ignorant anti-Christian tone into anything, including a review of a Jewish artist, and to conflate all such religiosity and moral message and art with political positions, as though by enjoying the art of Matisyahu, one is casting one’s ballot for the Republican ticket.
Rosen’s a joke.
18 Responses to “Slate Gets Stupid on Matisyahu”
posted by Editor at 9:22 PM
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.