Matisyahu To Open For Phish's Trey Anastasio
Matisyahu’s all set to tour this fall, with new dates announced on his website this morning. In addition to his September shows, he’ll be spending August on the road with Trey Anastasio of Phish, doing five appearances in Boston, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Chicago, and St. Louis!
Also posted to Matisyahu’s site today is a dub remix of his immensely powerful track, “Warrior”, by famed reggae producer Bill Laswell, the same man entrusted by Island Records to handle the dub remixes of Bob Marley’s work released in 1996. Download it here.
Mazal tov to Matis! I’m sure this is a huge deal for him, as Phish seemed to be a major inspiration for him.
I just hope I’m able to score tix for the Chicago show. And I thought I swore off $38 concerts…
On second thought… the frummers may want to be aware that the midwest shows all fall out during the nine days. That’s really a pisser.
It also raises a few questions but I’m not going to ask them. I wish him strength. Be a warrior for your soul, Matis.
Does anybody know where to get an mp3 version or do we have to wait for the next album?
Ok, I said I wouldn’t but I ended up asking questions anyway.
I asked them on his discussion board, where they are most likely to be addressed by the people that need to address them.
Wow, what a fantastic remix. Bill Laswell is a legend. I think he is a LOT more interesting than John Zorn. Matis is a true star. I predict that he will be bigger than Bob Marely. The world needs another Jewish prophet!
matisyahu is really great technically, really skilled… i can’t hear his soul. that’s why he’s never going to change the world maybe, until he learns to do THAT.
there is no soul in the modern world. Just religion as ideology, or firmly held beliefs. But what musician has “soul”?
[i still though stand by what i wrote above though … sorta!]
yoseph, i’m in the land. holla.
dan, ironically, i just got back to NYC. haw, haw.
yak yak yak
Velvel says:
“On second thought… the frummers may want to be aware that the midwest shows all fall out during the nine days. That’s really a pisser.
It also raises a few questions but I’m not going to ask them. ”
I’m aware that there’s a general exemption for working musicians trying to earn their livlihood during the three weeks (the reasons probably have to do with hardship and because playing music as a job is not the same as listening/playing for pleasure). I’m not sure about the nine days, but given that Matisyahu is a professional musician and that playing with an ex-Phish may be a rare and crucial career opportunity, it might be well within the power of a Rav to permit the performance.
Velvel’s point is that regardless of whether you have a “heter” from a rav for parnassah during the nine days (questionable for a successful musician whose heavily booked schedule provides dozens of high paying performances), this is a case of a role model and an example, which all Jews are from time to time, made more so in this case due to the media attention focused on an artist whose unique appeal is in no small part due to his Hasidic orthodox identity, message, philosophy and garb, upon which his career and success as an artist have been built. He claims to stand for something. So does he?
Soldiers in the US Army are told that if they are going to drink, carouse or otherwise engage in behavior that brings down the uniform, they should do it in civies. So too should it is with those in “Tsvios HaShem.” When you put on the uniform and step onto the stage, you make a statement without saying a word. It is a big opportunity indeed, the shailah is, which statement will the artist make?
By playing these shows, there seems to be some small crack in the foundation though which a small leak trickles, murmuring that music and message and beliefs can be superceded. It is an acknowledgement that musical success and being devout are one and the same, except on occassion when its more in one’s interest to follow one at the expense of another.
Ah well, another failed messiah, and from the Chabad movement no less. What’s new>?
Shamvis-
You’re looking at this as if it’s a “heter” obtained after shopping around for a compliant Rav and then browbeating the Rav until he gives in. Admittedly, I haven’t looked up the rules for the nine days (which are obviously more severe than those for the three weeks), but I’m wondering whether there isn’t a clean heter (without scare quotes), in which case I wouldn’t consider the performances to be a compromise of any kind. Your US Army example deals with behavior that doesn’t really have any “heter” (or heter) at all. (I’m also thinking of the times non-Orthodox people have made fun of the shabbat clock -“here they go with their loopholes again” -and are surprised to find out that the prohibition is against turning the light on, not having it be on, so there’s no loophole involved in the first place.)
But Dimitry Salita better not start fighting on Friday nights.
what failed? the messiah is an on going process, and i hold very strongly by not resisting messianic moments and situations just because they come out during the nine days. Lehefech, that’s when the really good redemptive healing is supposed to happen.
Gemara Taanis talks about, when shabbos happens during tisha b’av, shabbos rules. This applies anytime shabbos happens, not just on Saturdays.
fuck man, if you really need to, just do a siyum before the show. you can learn at least a whole mishna that fast. That’s what the tzanzer Rebbe would do, each of the nine days until tisha b’av, and they’d have these huge parties with meat and wine, every day, until the very last moment. And then, when sunset would hit and tisha b’av would start, the rebbe would just drop his head into his hands in tears, eventually lifting his head us to scream “Eicha!”
I elaborated a little more on the situation:
http://velvel.blogspot.com/200…
J –
The issue isn’t whether he has a heter to perform or not. Performing music isn’t the prohibition during the 9 days – the point is that the people who are going to listen to his music may be the Jews to whom the prohibition does apply.
Playing music for parnsah (livelihood) doesn’t fall under the prohibition, but listening to that music does. Who do you think is going to be in the audience ?
“Who do you think is going to be in the audience ?”
Since Matisyahu is only the opener, I’d say mostly Phish Phreaks. And “mostly” might be good enough for a clean heter. (In my informal survey of concertgoers – actually, I just asked myself – I’ve determined that I’ve never gone to a show for the sake of the opening act.)