By Paul de Barros
Seattle Times jazz critic
In the three-ring circus of American identity, where a Minnesota Jew can adopt the name of a Welsh poet and write African-American blues, nothing should be surprising.
But somehow, Matisyahu is even more startling than Bob Dylan.
A converted, 26-year-old Hasidic Lubavitcher, Matisyahu (née Matthew Miller), sings reggae and hip-hop about the actual Jerusalem, not the metaphorical Rastafarian one, wearing a yarmulke and scarf.
Unfortunately, unless you already have a ticket for this sold-out show, you're not going to be able to see Matisyahu, at least this time around. He plays at 8 p.m. Monday at the Showbox, 1426 First Ave., Seattle; $10.77 (800-325-7328).
You can hear him, though, on "Live at Stubbs" (JDUB), currently perched at the top of the Billboard reggae chart and No. 33 on the Top 200. Or on his forthcoming disc, "Youth," a major-label debut slated for March release.
You'd be part of a big crowd. Matisyahu recently played a sold-out show at Manhattan's 1,500-seat Webster Hall and performed last year at the Bonnaroo and Carifest festivals.
So what's the fuss?
For starters, the guy has a huge, cantorial voice and knows what to do with it. Sometimes, he thrusts it skyward into yearning, anthemic arcs that recall Robert Plant or Anthony Kiedis. At others, he lip-dribbles reggae toasts like a speed-demon auctioneer, or scats the nonsense syllables Hasids call niggun, with the folksy phrase, "Diggy-diggy-do" being a particular favorite.
The kid's also a pretty good poet, in that cinematic, hallucinatory style Dylan copped from Allen Ginsberg. (Most of the songs are in English, though some are in Yiddish). On "Aish Tamid," a song about the coming of the Third Jerusalem, he raps: "The daughters of Zion, lyin', cryin', in the mist, morning light slips in, shifting through the darkness, like a mourning wife, reminisce!, having vision of her long gone prince, memories drip raindrops, sowing emptiness intermixed with tears, like fears, that got fixed ... "
Occasionally, Matisyahu's affection of a Bob Marley accent is a bit silly, but there's so much urgency and joy in his delivery, it's hard to mind.
His band sound is distinctive, too, a bold and bouncy, West African-inflected reggae, with candy-colored guitar lines shadowing the words. None of those languid Jamaican smoke rings for this true believer.
Matisyahu was born in Pennsylvania and raised in Berkeley and White Plains, N.Y., by reformed Jewish parents who were social workers. His conversion (and name change) to a Hasidic sect that believes the messiah arrived last century in the person of the late Menachem Mendel Schneerson came later — after college, in Oregon.
Matisyahu now lives in the Lubavitcher neighborhood of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, which figures in some of his songs.
His popularity on the East Coast, where there has been a resurgence of interest in Jewish roots among the young, is as logical as his sold-out show in politically correct and profoundly un-Jewish Seattle is surprising.
Maybe he's more than a novelty. But this is also a guy who expresses nostalgia for theocracy ("Refuge"), refuses to shake the hand of any woman outside his family and believes Israel's borders are ordained by God.
That deep reggae bass is irresistible, though.
Paul de Barros: 206-464-3247 or pdebarros@seattletimes.com
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