About Matisyahu: Matthew Paul Miller is an American reggae rapper and alternative rock musician.
Music has always been such an amazing tool for me to access self and emotion.
Change is an internal thing. Different things happen or transform, and music and art is a documentation of that.
The best part of touring is the opportunity to make the music. You get to do what you love and have the ability to go out on stage every night and create.
I always knew I was different and that people had opinions about me. I guess I learned as best as I can to shield out a lot and live my life from within.
I don't think you could pull one Bob Marley song that didn't have quotes from the Torah or the Old Testament.
There's something really powerful when I, for example, hear Bob Marley's 'Exodus' - we know where we're going. We know where we're from.
I think there is a tendency for people to get rigid and caught up in their beliefs of what is right and wrong, and they lose sight of humanity. Being human has to come first before right or wrong.
When I started wearing a yarmulke, I wanted to stand out or take the form of whatever was inspiring me. But now I think there's something to not working it, to keeping it on the inside, and it just being kind of like a secret.
We're so quick to go to make things black and white, and to put things in their box. But everything is this mixture - and that's what this world is - is this blend of different things.
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...
I remember the moment when it hit me. I was walking down Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side, and it felt like I was literally walking out of a jail cell that I had been in. At that moment, I realized I could shave if I wanted. It was up to me an...
When there's light shining on a tree, that tree takes on different meaning. If there's no light at all it just looks dead. If you look at light as godly meaning, the world comes alive in a certain way.
People aren't religious because it's easy not to be. Like anything, it's habitual, and once it's a habit it's no longer hard.
The world that I come from is the world of raves, hip-hop clubs, and rock and roll.
The Jewish world is becoming fully integrated with the ideas of the normal world. They feed off each other.
As a kid, I was really into performing. I would do choruses, I would do musicals, whatever it was. And then, as a teenager, I got into an acting class at SUNY Purchase for gifted kids, and that really turned me on to material beyond musicals, Sam She...
I'm not an expert in instruments, beat programming, or electronics. For some people it's all about doing it themselves. But for me, it's all about find the people that can help make my vision come true.
I don't really know if I would consider myself anything in particular. I would say I'm inspired in a Hasidic way, but I certainly don't keep all the customs and rules I once did.
I started out in the Chabad movement, and I started pretty closed up, with the idea of there being that 'this is it.' I bought into that fully. I really explored in depth the Chabad ideology.
I felt a real strong connection and still do with Hanukkah. So it started out by doing concerts on Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights tour, and then, yeah, let's make some Hanukkah songs. Let me make a Hanukkah song that kids can listen to, party to an...
