The reggae-fueled Hasidic musician known as Matisyahu (born Matthew Miller) scored a surprise success last year with his second album, the concert disc Live At Stubb's. He's maintained momentum with his latest record, Youth, a Bill Laswell-produced collection of high-energy, textured dance-pop. He's living out a boyhood dream, inspiring people with music the way he was inspired by Phish, the band he followed as a teenager while trying to find himself spiritually. The end result of that quest—a conversion from secular Judaism to the strict tenets of Hasidism—has made Matisyahu a novelty in the music business, and has arguably prompted some of his meteoric success. And yet Matisyahu's religion has never been shtick. He's a serious, skilled musician who happens to be devout, not some latter-day version of 2 Live Jews. During a night off in the middle of his current marathon tour, Matisyahu spoke with The A.V. Club about his musical biography, and how he lives a rock-star life without losing his soul.
The A.V. Club: What do you do when you have a night off during a tour?
Matisyahu: I have a chavrusa, a friend that I learn with, who I talk with over the phone. So I'll be speaking with him, and I have a couple meetings and interviews. I think there's the possibility of some bowling happening at some point.
AVC: Reading about your life, it sounds like a lot has happened to you, between all the moving you did as a kid and all the restless wandering you did as a young adult. And yet you're only 26.
M: A lot has happened just in the last two years, actually. I got married, I had a son, I started a career and sold a few hundred thousand records.
AVC: How did you get started in music?
M: I always had a love of music, from the time I was a little kid, dressing up and singing along with Michael Jackson songs. I was in shows in high school, and then I got into reggae music and Phish and all that stuff, and I had a bongo drum I used to play. Basically, I started beatboxing with friends at lunchtime and after school, skipping class and stuff like that. We'd meet up in a park and everyone would freestyle, and I was the guy who made the beats. From there, I left home and went out on tour with Phish, and I was playing my drum in the parking lot and freestyle rapping and singing different songs that I'd heard. Then I lived in Oregon when I was 18 and started playing music with a guy out there, and played the coffee shops and started a band and played a good handful of shows, maybe 30 shows, in the Northwest. Then I did some acting, went to college, started playing around with the effects on a P.A. system, doing that reggae-chant thing. Did that for a couple years. I'd occasionally get up at an open mike night, and I'd sit in with friends who had bands.
Then I went to yeshiva, and when I was in yeshiva and becoming religious, there was a rabbi in Washington Square Park, from NYU. I was very close with him, and I would be there for Shabbos, and he would ask me to sing or rap or something at the Shabbos table, acoustic-style. From there, he asked me to perform at a menorah lighting in Union Square Park, which I did. I ran into an old friend, an acquaintance of mind from college, Aaron Dugan, my guitar player. He had never played reggae before, but he was just a nice guy and I knew he played guitar, so I asked him if he wanted to do this gig with me for, like, 50 bucks or something, and he did.
From there, there were gigs within the religious community, like at the youth center. I started charging a few hundred bucks, got a band, and this friend of mine who I knew from college who went to NYU's music business school told me that he was interested in starting a non-profit for Jewish music, and asked if I was interested in maybe making a record for them. In the meantime, when I was in yeshiva, I'd gotten a couple calls to do some shows with a couple other blacks and Jews who do reggae music. I forget the name of the club, but it was one of the first clubs that I went to after I got religious, down in the East Village. That led to an opening gig for a band, John Brown's Body, a Hanukkah show, and that was the first show where we showed up and the place was jam-packed, sold-out, there was a line around the corner. We did a promo show at the Mercury Lounge, it was the same thing, and then we just moved up. We did Irving Plaza, we did Webster Hall. We went out for four months straight in the van, after I'd just gotten married, and we toured around the country and played six nights a week. I got a bunch of press stuff, a bunch of TV stuff, a bunch of good opening acts, festival stuff over the summer. Everything just snowballed.
AVC: Did you envision this career path for yourself when you started making music?
M: Yeah, since I was about 17, my dream was to be a successful professional musician. I didn't know what instrument, I didn't know what I was gonna look like, but I watched the videos of Bob Marley and everything and thought, "That's what I want to do." I never thought of doing it in a Jewish market only.
AVC: Was there a Jewish equivalent to Christian rock when you were growing up?
M: Not for me, because I didn't grow up in a religious setting. I grew up pretty secular. I went to public school, and all the Jews that I knew, none of them were religious. While probably half of my friends were Jewish, they were all secular Jews. We went to Hebrew school, we knew we were Jewish, but it wasn't a major part of our existence. Culturally and musically, the music and the food and the clothes that we wore, everything was much more just American.
AVC: There is some Jewish pop music, though.
M: Within Orthodox circles, there are Jewish artists. They're not very popular, but there is a little niche there.
AVC: Do you ever listen to any of that?
M: I've never been into it. I've tried to listen to it, but I've never felt it was of quality.
AVC: There's apparently been a mini-controversy in the Jewish community over whether you've become too secular. Do you follow any of that?
M: No, I really don't. Is that a recent thing?
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