Matisyahu

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Matisyahu
Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Albums
Live at Stubb's
  US 30th 
gold
gold
11/26/2005 (26 weeks)
Youth
  US 4th 
gold
gold
03/25/2006 (19 weeks)
No place to be
  US 146 13/01/2007 (2 weeks)
Light
  US 19th 09/12/2009 (6 weeks)
Live at Stubbs: Vol. II
  US 89 02/19/2011 (1 week)
Spark Seeker
  US 19th 08/04/2012 (3 weeks)
Akeda
  US 36 06/21/2014 (1 week)
Singles
King Without a Crown
  US 28 
gold
gold
02/04/2006 (14 weeks)
One day
  US 85 
gold
gold
03/13/2010 (6 weeks)
Home ( Adel Tawil feat. Matisyahu)
  DE 23 
gold
gold
07/11/2014 (22 weeks)
  AT 6th 08/01/2014 (20 weeks)
  CH 64 05/10/2014 (2 weeks)

Matisyahu (* thirtieth June 1979 in West Chester , Pennsylvania ; actually Matthew Paul Miller ) is an American reggae - / Hip-Hop - / rock - musicians .

Life

The son of Jewish parents was brought up secularly in the USA and found his way to Hasidic Judaism as a teenager after a stay in Israel . As a singer, he tries to create a synthesis of modernity and traditional Judaism in the tradition of Shlomo Carlebach by combining metaphors from classical Judaism with hip-hop and reggae and coining the term “Hasidic Reggae” for them. In the United States, it is considered a phenomenon that concerns the general public and the media, including Time Magazine and Wall Street Journal . At the end of November 2005 he made his first appearance in Germany.

With his song King Without a Crown Matisyahu made a breakthrough in Switzerland .

Family and personal life

Matthew Paul Miller was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania and his family moved to White Plains , New York shortly after he was born . As a child, his parents sent him several times to Jewish class, a kind of Sunday school, which he refused. Overall, however, he was not raised religiously.

At 14, Miller began living the life of a hippie, wearing dreadlocks and learning to beatbox in the schoolyard. But soon he felt a great emptiness in his life. He decided to take a camping trip to Colorado. The landscape there impressed him so much that he began to believe in God and ultimately, in search of spirituality, traveled to Israel. In Jerusalem he began to develop a deeper connection with God and his Jewish faith.

Back in White Plains, it was difficult for Matisyahu to keep his faith there. He dropped out of school and followed the band Phish on their tours. During this time he thought a lot about his life and his faith. When he returned home, his parents sent him to a school in the wilderness for two years to restore order to his wild life. There Matisyahu took the opportunity to work on his musical skills, especially in reggae and hip-hop .

Matisyahu in May 2006

Matisyahu later attended the New York School , where he participated in the theater, among other things. In the Carlebach Synagogue he finally got to know Hasidism and began to pray on the school roofs during the breaks.

However, it was an encounter with a rabbi from the Chabad movement that eventually turned Matthew Miller into Matisyahu. He became a follower of Chabad Hasidism and moved to Crown Heights .

Matisyahu studied the Torah in the Hadar Hatorah Yeshiva . During this time he began writing and recording his first album. His musical influences include Bob Marley , Phish and Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach .

In 2007 Matisyahu announced that he was looking for alternative ways of worshiping in the Hasidic movement. He is currently particularly interested in the Pinsk-Karlin congregation in Jerusalem. Matisyahu is married to Tahlia and has two sons with her. He lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his family, who accompany him on his tours. He also has a younger sister named Julie.

Matisyahu at Summerjam 2013

In December 2011, he presented himself clean-shaven on his Facebook profile and announced that he no longer wanted to be a Hasid. The picture was subtitled: "No more Chassidic reggae superstar." Now he wanted to "win back himself" and announced "an amazing year full of music of rebirth".

Career

During his youth, Matisyahu performed under the alias MC Truth for the MC Mystic's Soulfari Band . Ultimately he began to live religiously on his own initiative around 2000 and began performing with the Jewish band Pey Dalid . During this time Matisyahu was a supporter of the Chabad movement. When he got the consent of a rabbi, he appeared again as a musician from 2003, this time under the name Matisyahu. Since then he has been touring with his band, some of which he still knows from high school. In 2014 he was a guest singer on the song tour of Adel Tawil , where he sang a. a. No Woman, No Cry , followed on June 27, 2014 by the joint single at home .

Matisyahu played the role of the Jewish exorcist Tzadok in the horror movie Possession, which was released in 2012 .

In August 2015, Matisyahu was temporarily at the center of an internationally recognized political controversy in connection with the anti-Israel campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). Matisyahu refused to make a pro-Palestinian declaration that was required to do so. The BDS group of the autonomous region of Valencia put the organizers of the music festival Rototom Sunsplash under pressure with a boycott threat to remove Matisyahu from the festival. No such explanation was required from other musicians. According to BDS País Valencià, the background was, among other things, his appearance at a fundraising event of an organization that supports the Israeli military and a justification for the Israeli military operation against the ship Mavi Marmara in international waters, in which nine activists were killed. After a wave of negative reactions, including from Spanish and international newspapers, the Spanish government and several Jewish and Israeli institutions, in which the organizers were particularly accused of anti-Semitism , they publicly apologized and renewed the invitation to Matisyahu. The concert finally took place as originally planned. In response to the controversy, Matisyahu met with a senior representative of Israeli settlers in the West Bank in September 2015 and has since supported the pro-Israel campaign against BDS.

subjects

In an interview with Chabad.org , the homepage of Chabad-Lubavitch, Matisyahu says: “All of my songs are influenced and inspired by the teaching that inspires me. I want my music to have a message that it reaches people and makes them think. The Hasidism says that the music is the one spring of the soul '. The music touches us at a very low point and speaks to us in a way that normal words cannot. "

language

Most of his songs are entirely in English, some partially or entirely in Hebrew (like T'zama L'Chol Nafshi ) or Yiddish ( Father in the Forest ).

Prices

The music department of the American men's magazine Esquire honored him as Most Lovable Oddball ("lovable comedic owl") of 2006 and named him the "most fascinating reggae artist in the world". In 2007 his album Youth was nominated for a Grammy.

Discography

year publication medium Label Remarks
2004 Shake Off the Dust ... arise! CD JDubMusic album
2005 Live at Stubb's CD Smi Epc (Sony BMG) Live Album (Limited Edition & Standard Edition)
2006 King Without a Crown CD Smi Epc (Sony BMG) single
Youth 12 ", CD, 2-CD Smi Epc (Sony BMG) Album (Limited Edition & Standard Edition)
Youth Dub 7 ", CD Smi Epc (Sony BMG) Dub album
Youth 7 ", CD Smi Epc (Sony BMG) Single (Premium Edition & Pur Edition)
No Place to Be / Live in Israel CD / DVD Smi Epc (Sony BMG) Remix album + live DVD
2007 Live at Glasslands Gallery Download In-house production Live album
2008 Live at Langerado Music Festival Download In-house production Live album
Live at Ft. Lauderdale Download In-house production Live album
Shattered CD Smi Epc (Sony BMG) EP
2009 Light 12 ", CD, CD / DVD Smi Epc (Sony BMG) Album (Limited Edition & Standard Edition)
2012 Spark Seeker 12 ", CD Falling Sparks album
2014 Akeda CD Elm City Music album
2014 Home ( Adel Tawil feat. Matisyahu) CD

swell

  1. ↑ a b Chart sources: DE AT CH US1 US2 US3
  2. ↑ Music Sales Awards: DE US
  3. ↑ Biography on Starpulse.com, accessed December 10, 2007.
  4. ↑ Shturem.net November 30, 2007, accessed December 7, 2007. (Hebrew)
  5. ^ Jewish Journal ( memento of December 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) on January 10, 2007, accessed on December 23, 2015. (English)
  6. ↑ http://www.ksta.de/koeln/adel-tawil---auf-karneval-haette-mal-richtig-lust-,15187530,26732242.html
  7. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0431021/
  8. ↑ Now apologize to Matisyahu. In: welt.de . August 19, 2015, accessed August 20, 2015 .
  9. ↑ Human rights campaigners in Spain clarify background to Matisyahu's concert cancellation at Rototom Sunsplash festival in Spain. August 19, 2015, Retrieved May 27, 2019 (Spanish).
  10. ↑ At FIDF Gala, Guests Treated to reggae, Rice. In: Observer. December 3, 2007, accessed May 27, 2019 .
  11. ^ Paul Lester: The moment when Matisyahu lost his cool The Chasidic reggae rapper on the issue of Israel. In: The Jewish Cronicle. May 17, 2010, accessed May 27, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Martin Dahms: Matisyahu: The entry, exit, invitation. In: Frankfurter Rundschau from August 20, 2015
  13. ↑ Much applause and little whistle for Matisyahu. In: Focus Online from August 23, 2015
  14. ↑ Watch: Matisyahu Meets Samaria Leader; 'We Won the Battle', in: Arutz Sheva, September 15, 2015, accessed March 8, 2017
  15. ↑ Madison Margolin: Matisyahu delivers sobering anti-BDS message in new single, in: The Times of Israel of October 7, 2016, accessed on March 8, 2017 (English)
  16. ↑ David Rosenberg: Matisyahu to headline anti-BDS event at UN, in: Arutz Sheva from May 24, 2016, accessed on March 8, 2017 (English)
  17. ^ Passover on chabad.org
  18. ↑ The Most Lovable Oddball. In: Esquire.com, February 8, 2007, accessed August 27, 2015

Web links

Commons : Matisyahu  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Matisyahu
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Miller, Matthew Paul (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American reggae, hip-hop, rock musician
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1979
PLACE OF BIRTH West Chester , Pennsylvania , USA