Matisyahu’s religious symbology on Youth can be as fuzzy as on the P.O.D. duet. He drops enough Mount Zion and Lion of Judah references here to keep the Rastas happy. But mostly he credits “Hashem,” Orthodox Jews’ preferred God alias, with bailing him out of a life of impurity. “If you’re drowning in the waters and you can’t stay afloat/Ask Hashem for mercy and he’ll throw you a rope,” he sings on “King Without a Crown.” The tone-challenged, quick-quick-slow ragga chatter and fake Jamaican accent make him sound like a 311 understudy, a constant reminder that beneath the beard lurks another white boy with a Rasta fetish. That’s not to say he doesn’t catch some choice beat waves or that “Indestructible” won’t get your head-nodding or that he’s not bringing uplift and positivity to anyone who’s looking to change their lives.
But what I hear on Youth is one thing we don’t need any more of right now: religious fundamentalism, even if it comes with catchy pop hooks. Contrary to Bono’s prayer-breakfast plea, the issue is not whose God, or whose religion, or how that religion is used by governments and terrorists. The issue is the ever-growing pull of religion and faith itself — how powerful beliefs in the unknown get lived as real and, in the worst cases, get turned into civic, social, and political policy.
Maybe all of Madonna’s music-video phylacteries and dance-floor Torah tales were her way of alerting us to the Matisyahu era to come. In politics, it’s the God you pray to that matters most; in pop music, it’s the quality of the pose — any God will do as long as you pretend to pray to something. For the secular among us, neither is a particularly appealing option.
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On the Web:
Matisyahu: http://www.hasidicreggae.com
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In addition to the usual fare of Messiah and Nutcracker performances and bands dressed up in Santa suits this past holiday season, Boston got an unusually large dose of Jewish culture — far more than the electric menorah in Kenmore Square or the klezmer rendition of “Chanukah Oh Chanukah” on the Holiday Pops program.
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The Portland Press Herald probably isn’t on the Rosh Hashanah card list for many Maine Jews this year.
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The Maccabees, the Holy Temple, the menorah that burned for eight days straight — all of these went unmentioned during JDub Records’ Chanukah celebration at the Paradise on Tuesday night.
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While the battle over same-sex marriage dominates the headlines in the ongoing struggle for gay-and-lesbian equality, many other battles are just as important, if not more so.
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In 1962, the American Jewish Congress released Invitation to Yiddish , a double-LP speak-along-with-the-record instructional course designed as a beginner’s introduction to Yiddish.
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You won't hear feel-good Chanukah ditties in the style of the Leevees nor any pages out of Matisyahu's prayer book. This is a foul-mouthed, shtick-heavy act inspired by the borscht-belt comics and the seventies-era.
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Whatever Mitt Romney is doing in a few years, he’ll always have the Summer of ’07.
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