Matisyahu
Matisyahu
Matthew Paul Miller, known by his Hebrew and stage name Matisyahu, is a Jewish American reggae vocalist, beatboxer, and alternative rock musician...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth30 June 1979
CountryUnited States of America
came david lyrics material music musicians producers took worked written wrote
With 'Light,' I collaborated with a lot of different producers and musicians I respected, and we all wrote and worked on material which I then took to an old-school producer, David Kahne, and we put it all together. The lyrics came first - they were written before the music.
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I started at home as a kid putting on shows and lip-syncing Michael Jackson for the grown-ups. Then, in musicals and plays in school. At 17, I was performing in coffee shops and in parking lots at Phish shows. At 18, I had a band that played local shows in the Northwest.
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Songs that aren't even remotely connected to Christmas are now officially canonized Christmas tunes. 'Frosty the Snowman,' 'Jingle Bells' and 'Winter Wonderland' never mention anything religious but are still notches in Christmas' belt of musical dominance.
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My mother's sister married a man from Barbados, and my cousins were raised in Barbados. So we traveled down there, they came up every summer for camp, and I started paying attention to their music. And that was the first place I ever remember hearing reggae and liking it.
became course evident excitement faith found happened musical newly took
When I first started, everything happened at once. I became religious, my musical career took off, I got married, I had kids, and all that happened within the course of a year. I had an excitement about this newly found faith, and so I was writing about that in a very evident kind of way.
became becoming fall music stopped
I did some acting in college. But then everything stopped when I was a junior, in the fall of 2001, when I started becoming religious. Once I became a full-on Hasidic, I stopped everything. I stopped music. I stopped acting.
connected doors enjoyed extremely hope love music opens perform terms within
Music is my first love and the thing that I feel extremely connected to. I feel like I still have a long way to go within that in terms of being able to perform and write songs. But, yeah, I really hope 'The Possession' opens doors for me to do more acting, because I really enjoyed it.
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The place that I'm trying to come from and where I'm trying to make music from is when I feel like I'm able to somehow, like, transcend it all and just speak right to God.
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When I went to see certain shows when I was a kid, they changed my life. They made me tap into that place inside myself that I was unable to get to, so music is that tool, that bridge, and that's the kind of music I'm interested in making.
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For me, it's always this constant battle and search when I'm out on stage as to where and when do I really open myself up to the people that are there. How do I let myself feel present in the space, and how do I allow myself to get into the music and interact with the band members.
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The No. 1 best-selling Christmas album of all time is from Kenneth Bruce Gorelick, the Jewish smooth-jazz legend Kenny G. American Jews have always produced a lot of holiday music, just not Hanukkah music.
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It was a really strange way that I came into music. Once I gave voice to it, the pit of emotions that I guess I knew was inside of me for a long time, the stream never really stopped.
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When I'm meditating on an idea, I try to let the idea completely saturate me to the point where I feel like I'm covering myself in it or totally immersing myself in it, so that everywhere I'm looking, everywhere I'm going, it's through the lens of that idea. And that's sort of what I do with the music - I try to lose myself in it.
aspect bring bringing discovered good listen might music test ways
When I listen to music, there's usually some aspect of that music that I like, and that's what I take and try to bring into my own music. Bringing in other musicians to collaborate with is a good way for me to test out new ways or make music that I might have not discovered on my own.