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<\/p>\nOnce playfully describing himself as a \u201cChassidic reggae superstar,\u201d Matisyahu is a difficult-to-classify musical force. And that’s by design: with roots in reggae, hip-hop and Jewish tradition, the beatboxing singer makes music that smashes genre classification. Across his six albums \u2013 beginning with 2004’s Shake off the Dust \u2026 Arise<\/i> and through his brand new album Undercurrent<\/i>, Matisyahu has deftly carved out a niche all his own.<\/p>\n
With a penchant for improvisation \u2013 and a band with the chops to pull it off in a live setting \u2013 Matisyahu takes his music wherever the spirit leads him. Though his younger years in White Plains, New York included immersion in the tenets of his Jewish faith, it was only as he grew into adulthood that Matisyahu (born Matthew Paul Miller) fully embraced Judaism.<\/p>\n
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Matisyahu’s spiritual concerns might be said to be one of the three points of his musical foundation. The others came earlier. As a teenager in the ’90s, Matisyahu attended a concert featuring The Roots, Common and beatboxers. \u201cThat was the first time I took hip-hop seriously,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
His other early influential musical experience came when he took LSD at a Phish concert. \u201cThat completely changed my concept of what music could be,\u201d he says. More than merely being \u201ccool and exciting,\u201d Matisyahu found that for him music could be a \u201cspiritual or religious experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
But hip-hop and jam are only two of the styles that inform Matisyahu’s music. \u201cStep Out into the Light,\u201d the opening track on Undercurrent<\/i>, is steeped in soul. He says that when writing that track, he sought to \u201ccreate something that feels organic and like a throwback, but not in the sense of the style of the music.\u201d Matisyahu aims to push the style forward, he says. He characterizes the music on Undercurrent<\/i> as the most authentic as to what he does with his band 200 days a year on the road.<\/p>\n
Matisyahu notes the traditional working method for many creative artists: write songs, record them yourself, put together a band, learn the songs, and tour. His approach, he says, is similar, but almost in reverse. First he develops a vision for the new project. Then he asks himself, \u201cWho are the musicians that are going to be able to create that sound?\u201d He assembles the band and heads out on the road for a year or so. \u201c50% of a show will be improvisation,\u201d he says. Performances are recorded, but only for reference.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I sit in a studio writing room for a month,\u201d he explains, \u201clistening back to those recordings, starting to form songs out of those.\u201d Only then does the actual recording begin, as Matisyahu creates an instrumental record. \u201cOnce that’s all done with overdubs and I’ve got almost a complete body of work done, I take a couple weeks to craft out lyrics and vocal parts, and record those.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the record done, Matisyahu takes his band back on the road to promote the album, but still maintains a focus on improvisation. The members of his current band \u2013 guitarist Aaron Dugan, bassist Stu Brooks, percussionist Cyro Baptista, drummer Tim Keiper and keyboardist Rob Marscher \u2013 have deep experience playing jazz.<\/p>\n
But they don’t play jazz with Matisyahu. \u201cFor me, it’s all about trying to get the right players involved so that we can improvise within the hip hop or reggae feel,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt’s all about risk and reward: the greater the risk, the more the reward when it comes together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Matisyahu believes that having top-notch musicians is critical. Without them, \u201cthat’s where all the clich\u00e9s of bad jam bands come into play, of just noodling around on the same notes and not actually having the music tell a story and go some place.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me, that’s what it’s all about,\u201d he says. \u201cThere’s nothing interesting to me whatsoever in painting a picture that I’ve already painted.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Once playfully describing himself as a \u201cChassidic reggae superstar,\u201d Matisyahu is a difficult-to-classify musical force. And that’s by design: with roots in reggae, hip-hop and Jewish tradition, the beatboxing singer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13195,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,41,63],"tags":[3149],"class_list":["post-13194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hip-hop","category-interview","category-reggae","tag-matisyahu","cat-36-id","cat-41-id","cat-63-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13196,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13194\/revisions\/13196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}