Funny, He Doesn't Look Jamaican

Matisyahu has fused music and religion in a highly unorthodox -- er, make that orthodox -- way. (By Helayne Seidman For The Washington Post)

After the program, he remained in Oregon for nearly two years. Bought a motorcycle, worked at a ski resort, snowboarded. A lot. When he wasn't snowboarding, he haunted the coffeehouse scene, jamming with a group he'd formed there, Soul for I. Singing led to acting and he snared the lead in a community theater production of Peter Shaffer's "Equus," an apt play for an angry young man.

Then drugs started creeping back into his life. He needed out. New York, and college, beckoned.

You're all that I have and you're all that I need

Each and every day I pray to get to know you please

I want to be close to you, yes I'm so hungry

You're like water for my soul when it gets thirsty . . .

Sometimes the world is dark and I just can't see . . .

But I believe, yes I believe, I said I believe

-- "King Without a Crown"

At the New School, from which he graduated in 2002, Matisyahu plunged into the arts, music and theater, crafting lyrics and plays, performing at open mikes at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, making music wherever he could. Mystical themes dominated his art. He wanted a real, tangible connection to the ethereal world of the spirit. He was a musician without a band, a spiritual seeker without a religion.

"I was looking for something more," he says. "I was looking for a way to stay clean, I was looking for a way to fill the gap or hole in my life . . . to glue all the pieces of my life together in one common focus."

Two experiences provided the glue: He started attending the Carlebach Shul, an Upper West Side synagogue with a focus on ecstatic music. And one day, in Washington Square Park, he met Rabbi Dov Yonah Korn, who was proselytizing as part of the Chabad movement, an outreach branch of Judaism dedicated to turning Jews on to their religious roots.

At first, says Korn, "I didn't give him any special attention." He saw a grungy-looking kid who called himself Matt. Then, "I thought he was a very interesting young guy, kind of looked a little lost. . . . He was an average kind of youth searching for something."

Under Korn's guidance, Matisyahu took on the accouterments of Orthodox Judaism. The kid who eschewed all rules became the man who embraced regulation.

Matt became Matisyahu.

"One day I just decided to wear my yarmulke in the street, see how I felt representing myself," Matisyahu says. "You're not just seen as an American, a white American. You're seen as a Jew. That's the first thing people will see. And I like that."

For a while he lived with Korn and his family in their Greenwich Village apartment, learning how to be an observant Jew. (He says he remains on good terms with his parents.) For a while, he put aside his music, and enrolled in a yeshiva in the Orthodox neighborhood of Crown Heights, where he spent nine months, in deep study and reflection.

His life changed on another level, too: Through Korn, Matisyahu met his wife, Talia. She was a graduate film student at New York University, a young Orthodox Jew.

The two were wed in Crown Heights in 2004. Six months ago their baby, Laivy, was born.

Man is just a man

Filled with thoughts and weakness . . .

I feel I'm just a man, flesh and blood

Homeless

-- "Late Night in Zion"

As he came out of yeshiva, his music and his religion were synthesized. He'd written more than 20 songs, and he was ready . He met Aaron Dugan -- a bass player, keyboardist and fellow New School student -- two years ago at a club gig. Dugan isn't Jewish, but he too was drawn to the spirituality of reggae. The two hit it off immediately, Matisyahu writing lyrics, Dugan crafting tunes.

"I tell people, [Matisyahu could be] a Muslim singer or a Christian singer," Dugan says. "It just happened this way. If it's on a peace and love level, I'm into it."

"The only time it was a little awkward, we were at a Stuckey's truck stop in Idaho," Dugan recalls with a laugh. "And he was praying at the gas station and the local guys there didn't know what was going on. That was the only time I was going, ' Oh boy ,' worrying for our safety."

The road shows led to a first album, "Shake Off the Dust . . . Arise," released by J-Dub Records in 2004. MTVU, a version of MTV aired exclusively on campuses, played the live version of "King Without a Crown," and university students voting online ranked him No. 1 on the show "The Dean's List." He held that rank for months.

"His music is just connecting at a moment where eclecticism is prized more than ever," says Ross Martin, head of programming for MTVU. "His message is one of unification. . . . It's broad enough that people from all walks of life can connect."

Indeed, Matisyahu has a number of things working for him: There's the curiosity factor, to be sure. But also Matisyahu's jam band heritage, where improvised music means transcendence and you're expected to dance, dance, dance. His spirituality has resonance with a generation used to mixing and matching cultural influences, the products of interracial and interfaith marriages, embracing ethnicity in a way that is once earnest and playful, taking on stereotypes and turning them upside down. Will his career last beyond the novelty factor?

"Whether reggae ultimately benefits, I can't say," observes Dermot Hussey, program director of the reggae satellite radio channel XM 101 The Joint. "But he's definitely benefiting . . . He's going to be very big."

What's this feeling?

My love will rip a hole in the ceiling

Givin' myself to you from the essence of my being

Sing to my G-d all these songs of love and healing

-- "King Without a Crown"

It's close to the start of the Sabbath, and so the kosher shops on 72nd Street are closing up, one by one. Matisyahu has decided to spend the holiday in Manhattan, so he has a bit of time before sundown.

First, he pops into a Jewish barbershop for a quick haircut. The barber grabs his shears, and Matisyahu's curls fall to the floor, leaving him with the downy fuzz of a newborn chick, the better, he says, to fit tefillin, or a prayer box, on his head when he prays. The words of the Torah are inscribed inside. The idea is to keep God's words close to his head.

After the haircut, Matisyahu walks to the sink to wash his hands. Another mitzvah.

His life is contained by ritual.

This is what brings him peace.

He pauses next to the Pizza Cave, a kosher pizzeria, and a gaggle of preteen boys wearing yarmulkes spot him through the window, and pop up in their seats, nudging each other and pointing.

Look who it is, one of the kids says, bolting through the door.

Matisyahu.

Armed with cell phone cameras, they aim them at Matisyahu, snapping and snapping pictures.

Matisyahu stands, poses a little, looking embarrassed by all the attention, and then, too, just the slightest bit pleased.