The true story of a White Plains boy who found both God and reggae
Mike Rubin writing for nextbook.org
Essay by Mike Rubin
Walking through Brooklyn last summer, some tattered advertising on a scaffolding stopped me dead in my tracks. Peering out from the upper left corner of a red, yellow, and green poster for the annual Reggae Carifest, the giant showcase for the top stars in Jamaican music, was a photo of a bespectacled young man in a black fedora and suit, solemnly stroking his thick beard. I'd fallen somewhat out of the cultural loop in the previous months while taking care of my new baby and was dumbfounded: Who was this lone white face among dancehall titans Buju Banton, Bounty Killer, Luciano, and Elephant Man?
Next to the ad hung a poster for a newish CD titled Live at Stubb's by Matisyahu, featuring a silhouette of the same young man clutching a mic. The poster led me to a website trumpeting the artist as "the Hasidic Reggae superstar." Whether that means he's a superstar who plays "Hasidic reggae" or a reggae superstar who happens to be Hasidic is moot. Right now, both statements are true: Live at Stubb's spent most of the last year near the top of the Billboard reggae charts, peaking at No. 1, and if Hasidic reggae is a movement then Matisyahu is a genre unto himself.
2005 was a banner year for Matisyahu, and he's braced for even greater success in 2006. He recorded two songs with born-again headbangers P.O.D. for their recent CD, and is set to release Youth, his first major-label album on Epic this March. In addition to Carifest, his recent gigs range from sold-out shows at Manhattan's Hammerstein Ballroom and Webster Hall to the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee, where he performed Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry" alongside Phish veteran Trey Anastasio in front of 90,000 people. It's been a remarkable journey for a high school dropout, now 26, who followed that same jam band across the country a decade ago.
Hasidic reggae: The very phrase sounds like fodder for a Saturday Night Live skit, and a predictably unfunny one at that. By dressing in the anachronistic manner of Lubavitch forebears—call it "Old Shul"—and shunning the temptations of the secular world, an adherent of Orthodox Judaism would seem an extremely unlikely candidate to entertain the masses. It's certainly an attention-grabbing combination, a surprising marriage of secular and sacred, black and white, made richer by the memory of the 1991 race riots in Matisyahu's adopted neighborhood of Crown Heights.
TO READ MORE PLEASE FOLLOW THE LINK...
Mike Rubin has written about music for The New York Times, Spin, GQ, and Rolling Stone
Mike Rubin writing for nextbook.org
Essay by Mike Rubin
Walking through Brooklyn last summer, some tattered advertising on a scaffolding stopped me dead in my tracks. Peering out from the upper left corner of a red, yellow, and green poster for the annual Reggae Carifest, the giant showcase for the top stars in Jamaican music, was a photo of a bespectacled young man in a black fedora and suit, solemnly stroking his thick beard. I'd fallen somewhat out of the cultural loop in the previous months while taking care of my new baby and was dumbfounded: Who was this lone white face among dancehall titans Buju Banton, Bounty Killer, Luciano, and Elephant Man?
Next to the ad hung a poster for a newish CD titled Live at Stubb's by Matisyahu, featuring a silhouette of the same young man clutching a mic. The poster led me to a website trumpeting the artist as "the Hasidic Reggae superstar." Whether that means he's a superstar who plays "Hasidic reggae" or a reggae superstar who happens to be Hasidic is moot. Right now, both statements are true: Live at Stubb's spent most of the last year near the top of the Billboard reggae charts, peaking at No. 1, and if Hasidic reggae is a movement then Matisyahu is a genre unto himself.
2005 was a banner year for Matisyahu, and he's braced for even greater success in 2006. He recorded two songs with born-again headbangers P.O.D. for their recent CD, and is set to release Youth, his first major-label album on Epic this March. In addition to Carifest, his recent gigs range from sold-out shows at Manhattan's Hammerstein Ballroom and Webster Hall to the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee, where he performed Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry" alongside Phish veteran Trey Anastasio in front of 90,000 people. It's been a remarkable journey for a high school dropout, now 26, who followed that same jam band across the country a decade ago.
Hasidic reggae: The very phrase sounds like fodder for a Saturday Night Live skit, and a predictably unfunny one at that. By dressing in the anachronistic manner of Lubavitch forebears—call it "Old Shul"—and shunning the temptations of the secular world, an adherent of Orthodox Judaism would seem an extremely unlikely candidate to entertain the masses. It's certainly an attention-grabbing combination, a surprising marriage of secular and sacred, black and white, made richer by the memory of the 1991 race riots in Matisyahu's adopted neighborhood of Crown Heights.
TO READ MORE PLEASE FOLLOW THE LINK...
Mike Rubin has written about music for The New York Times, Spin, GQ, and Rolling Stone
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