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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. "
Matisyahu
Emotions
Voice
Time
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" I enjoyed coming home to Crown Heights. There was a certain order to life there. You know, Shabbos, spending time with your family, eating and being in 'shul.' Prayers at nighttime, prayers in the morning. Everyone knows everybody; you walk your kids everywhere. "
Matisyahu
Morning
Time
Home
" My music is really about people connecting with their identities, even if they aren't Jewish. "
Matisyahu
Music
Jewish
Even
" 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. "
Matisyahu
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" When I became religious, it was full-force for me. And, through the lifestyle of being out on the road with non-Jewish musicians, in non-Jewish nightclubs and going all over the world - getting out of the shtetl - opened me up to having experiences that other religious men might not have to think or worry about. "
Matisyahu
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Me
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" I do what I love, thank God. I get to make music and get inspiration through Judaism. I can see why people might be surprised, because it's not been done before. It's certainly not typical. People are always trying to wrap head their around it. But it's probably simpler than everyone thinks. "
Matisyahu
Music
God
Love
" 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. "
Matisyahu
Music
Place
Speak
" 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. "
Matisyahu
Acting
Hope
Music
" When I first started reading about the kabbalists, I would hear about them being seen in strange places. It would turn out that they were doing some kind of spiritual work to elevate the sparks. In my life and career, I've had the opportunity to find myself where I could make some spiritual moves, to do some work that is spiritually important. "
Matisyahu
Life
Myself
Reading
" Is it possible Hanukkah doesn't inspire folksy songs? Plot lines may be a part. The Christmas story has a lot of material to work with. There's Jesus and his birth, the wise men, their gifts and tons of frankincense. "
Matisyahu
Birth
Wise
Story
" 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. "
Matisyahu
Now
Never
Connected
" Judaism is my life. Everything I do is through the lens of Torah. "
Matisyahu
Life
Lens
Everything
" 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. "
Matisyahu
White
Black And White
Black
" When I was 17, I listened to reggae music. I loved Bob Marley. I started growing dreadlocks. It's always been my way, that the outside matches what's going on with me inside. "
Matisyahu
Loved
Growing
Always
" One of the first places where I started to respond to song lyrics was in reggae music. A lot of what I was responding to were references to the Old Testament. It was not that I had to adapt the lyrics to the sound. Reggae and the Old Testament are bound up together. There wasn't anything that I had to do. "
Matisyahu
Sound
Music
Together
" I don't partake, really, of any of the typical rock-star-lifestyle things you could think of. I try to be responsible when I'm out on the road. I take it pretty seriously, what I'm doing, as something that's good for the world, and my family, and everyone. "
Matisyahu
World
Think
Road
" The Jewish world is becoming fully integrated with the ideas of the normal world. They feed off each other. "
Matisyahu
Normal
Feed
Jewish
" Growing up, the way that I looked was very important to me. I was always trying to impress people, and when I grew my beard there was a certain freedom, a separation, getting past this the way I looked, identify myself as a spiritual seeker. "
Matisyahu
Past
Myself
Freedom
" 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. "
Matisyahu
Now
Me
Kind
" 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. "
Matisyahu
Kid
School
Coffee
" 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. "
Matisyahu
Doing
Vision
True
" In 2004, when I started recording my first CD, I was coming right out of yeshiva. So I had spent two years completely immersed in the Hasidic culture, disconnected completely from the secular world - movies, music, people. "
Matisyahu
People
Movies
Culture
" It's a holistic process for me during a show. I'm always focusing on the technical aspects of my voice. I try to make my voice do what I want. One big thing I do to improve on each show is to listen back to performances on CD while on tour. "
Matisyahu
Back
Voice
Try
" Some artists are bound to an image: Bob Marley has dreadlocks, Matisyahu has a beard. But that's a reminder that the whole thing is not about style. It's about music. "
Matisyahu
Bound
Image
Music
" I always had a love of music, from the time I was a little kid, dressing up and singing along with Michael Jackson songs. "
Matisyahu
Kid
Singing
Time
" 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. "
Matisyahu
Tree
Light
World
" I don't think you could pull one Bob Marley song that didn't have quotes from the Torah or the Old Testament. "
Matisyahu
Torah
Song
Think
" There was a time when I was fighting with the decision as to whether or not a Hasidic man could go out and have a music career in the world and be involved in pop culture. For me, I was able to bring those two things together for quite some time. "
Matisyahu
Together
Culture
Man
" I was into acting as a kid. There was a time when I was 18 that I played the boy in a production of 'Equus' in Oregon, and I thought that was going to be my life. "
Matisyahu
Thought
My Life
Life
" 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. "
Matisyahu
Me
Looking
Music
" What is it to keep kosher? Is it eating kosher potato chips? Kosher is a bigger idea. I think it's about being healthy. But according to some people, it's about not eating this food because it's forbidden by the Jewish law. My view of the halachah changed a little bit. The laws are there hopefully to be a tool. "
Matisyahu
Think
Law
Healthy