[Captain Rhino]

Race, he said, is certainly an important factor, but it is not the only one. “I sense that sometimes there are claims of racial essentialism,” he said, “that are somehow going to trump other forms of identity status. We’re always grappling with authenticity. Rather than isolate the debate solely in terms of racial dynamics, I’d take it to the question of reggae, and ask, ‘Is it legitimate or authentic in that context?’ ”

Yeah. These are exactly the same questions I have whenever I hear Kathleen Battle beautifully sing Rossi arias or Yoyo Ma exquisitely play Bach on his cello.

NOT!

[SquirrelKing]

Got him spooled up on the Dell Jukebox now. Awesome.

[Cinnamon Girl]

“The onus is on Matisyahu to articulate more explicitly what his cultural approach is in relation to this black cultural form,” he said.

The guy likes reggae. Calm down.

[JerseyHighlander]

Matt knows he's a minstrel act. he is no different than the 1000's of other Jewish suburbanite teen boys raised in the NYC burbs who moved to music to get stoned and laid in high school. Nothing wrong with that, I come from 4 generations of Jewish musicians.

I know dozens of other Jewish musicians our age we grew up around here who are by far better musicians.

To fully understand where Matisyahu comes from, listen to his unreleased song about White Plains high school. The spirituality was his "hook" to get the religious girls to put out, and he turned it into a career. He's still the 17 y.o. phishhead, add a few years of yeshiva study, but it's still a heavy stoner under that Lubavitcher facade.

http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=18680
disc 2 song 2

I've been to some small pre 1st record release gigs of matisyahu's, I couldn't resist seeing this schtick.
In between sets I grilled Matt and Alon Cohen about reggae, house, hall, dub, steel drum bands/musicians that are generally considered standard repetoire for reggae artists, trying to get a feel on where he came from, Matisyahu was blank on most of them, Josh Werner jumped in and took over the conversation. I also immediately saw Matisyahu as another Perry Farrell type, and they've since found each other.

I get a kick out of Matt stealing Jewish symbology BACK from the anti-Semitic Rasta culture.

[Alexander Rubin]

He's a good reggae singer.

Either listen to him or don't, as you prefer. Quit whining. Stupid author, creating a fuss about nothing.

[wideawake]

If you're not angry at me about the other thread, check out this one - this is the singer I was telling you about.

i've seen Matisyahu in concert - he's a very talented guy.

[wideawake]

A white Englishman who performed under the name of Judge Dread in the mid-1970s had a number of chart-topping reggae hits in both the UK and Jamaica.

he was close personal friends with Jamaica's premier reggae DJ, producer and artist (until Bob Marley took his crown) Prince Buster.

Sanneh is a dumbass who doesn't understand the history of reggae music, and is apparently unaware of the fact that Bob Marley was as white as he was black.

I suppose that Sanneh doesn't listen to music by Jimmy Cliff or the Ethiopians or other seminal reggae acts because some of their music was written and almost all of it was produced by Leslie Kong, a Jamaican who must have been a "cultural appropriator" because he is Chinese, not black.

[wideawake]

“As Matisyahu comes from the Chasidic perspective,” said Forman, “O’Connor carries her well- known Catholicism into the mix.”

Ridiculous. O'Connor is most famous for ripping apart a photograph of the late Servant of God Pope John Paul II on live television - she is clearly an apostate, not a Catholic.

[wideawake]

As proof of sorts, Forman mentioned that the industry itself refrained from labeling Matisyahu’s music as reggae.

Matisyahu doesn't perform reggae exclusively - some of his tunes are reggae, some are melodic beatbox tunes and some are kind of neo-psychedelic jams.

Categorizing his music as "alternative" is proof of nothing.

[Porterville]

I think his music is crappy.. especially when he speaks with a NYC accent. It is like watching a Disney character... or the reincarnation of Vanilla Ice

[Stultis]

Well, "Day-Oh" was written by a Jew, and sung by a black (Belafonte) who seemed to specialize in fake "calypso" songs, and that was apparently alright.

[GodGunsGuts]

Here is something that was sent to me via email from the Hasidic group that runs the AttacReport.com website:

---

Subversion Alert

This week:
Matisyahu (Matthew Miller), Brooklyn (?), NY

We've decided to take one more diversion before returning to our exposure of the phony, Moscow-controlled "Sanhedrin." This week's profile is inspired by the article we did last week on subversion of art, including music.

Tragically, there are a number of orthodox Jewish youth who have been losing part or all of their religious upbringing in recent years, many of them trying to break into fashionable areas of the music industry. Lured by the temptation of illusory "fame" and "success," such people are drawn into some of the worst, most destructive types of "music," including punk, rap, and Reggae.

Ordinarily, we would presume this is what happened with the new rock star Matisyahu, a Lubavitcher in his mid-twenties who grew up non-religious but apparently got involved with Judaism a few years ago. He is now performing to mass audiences throughout the United States and has released a few albums, all featuring his songs that fuse rap and Reggae (or so the news reports and other descriptions say), ableit with "religious"-sounding lyrics (and while dressed like a Hasid). But in Matisyahu's case, it is virtually a certainty that he is not naive or misguided at all, but rather is one of several subversive influences who have recently been infiltrating the orthodox, Hasidic Jewish world to promote the Communist agenda in music. Three main lines of evidence point in this direction:

1) Matisyahu started his career a few years ago by studying music at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan, New York. Now known simply as the "New School," it is no ordinary institution; since its founding in 1919 as a haven for Socialist and Communist revolutionaries, it has remained an overtly Marxist center for indoctrinating and recruiting college students. Various faculty members have been known to be affiliated with Communist Parties or Communist-front organizations, and its curriculum remains thoroughly drenched with Marxist radicalism to this very day. The inherent evil of Communism (being that of the forces of Amalek) is so strong that no one who is ever involved with it can smoothly walk away untainted; once a person has been in its grip, he must fight it with a passionate anti-Communism for the rest of his life, or else he stands no chance of breaking away. The Torah commands us actively to arouse hatred for Amalek, and with good reason: No one can escape the clutches of Amaleki evil without turning and destroying it, or at least arousing an intense, powerful hatred of it. But Matisyahu has not done so, nor does he even participate in any public, anti-Communist activism of any kind, so far as we know.

2) Matisyahu's career has received the kind of boost that a naive, misguided musician cannot get today; his albums are produced by Sony Records, one of the world's largest labels. Communist infiltration and subversion throughout the music industry can be documented, at least circumstantially, dating back decades. It was this influence that promoted Communist folk singer Pete Seeger, the Beatles (who promoted drugs and Marxist revolution, and who brought that subversive influence into their music as well as the lyrics), and innumerable other hard-left or immoral "musicians." The music industry today almost uniformly promotes cultural degradation and subversion (sometimes in loosely "religious" disguise), and essentially never allows any positive musical influences to surface. Yet Matisyahu, having been trained at the Communist-controlled New School, was immediately picked up and heavily promoted by a major music label!

3) He is also promoted by known Communist agents. One clear example is the web site of Aaron Frimer, an infiltrator with Marxist and Communist connections whom we have exposed previously, where Frimer enthusiastically pushes Lubavitch youth to buy and listen to Matisyahu's albums. If Matisyahu were genuine, other subversive agents would treat him with the same disdain and hatred they reserve for JAHG-USA and our work to defund the PLO and to teach the Noahide Laws. Yet instead they adore Matisyahu.

Rather than bringing any worthwhile message to the larger world, Matisyahu is accomplishing the cultural subversion of the Hasidic and orthodox worlds, and is setting an abhorrently wicked example for non-Jews as well, giving them a totally false impression of what Judaism and the Torah represent. He is adapting the sounds of rap (which is inherently violent, revolutionary "music" always used to promote gangs and hatred) and Reggae, which is bound up with drug-using culture and, at least in the case of Reggae singer Bob Marley, with Marxist revolution as well. These forms of "music" intrinsically lack any positive value, and fall clearly into the types of music forbidden by Torah.

(Note: The underground Communist apparatus and its aboveground tentacles are actively engaged in subversion in all sectors and institutions of society today. Its agents would dearly love to know the full extent of our information, which would assist their disinformation efforts. Consequently, we do not divulge all our facts or sources. These profiles are intended only as a warning to the wise to monitor the individuals and groups exposed here, and to avoid their influence.)

[perfect stranger]

ping Matisyahu