by ERIN MACLEOD

When Matisyahu stage-dived into the reggae scene, sporting Hasidic clothing and spitting about “Torah food for my brain,” it pretty much blew a lot of people’s minds. YLove, an MC originally from Baltimore and now living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, has been equally startling to audiences. Rhyming in Yiddish, Hebrew and Aramaic, the likewise Hasidic YLove learned to freestyle in yeshiva in Jerusalem. But is it really that bizarre? The Mirror spoke to Matisyahu and Ylove, separately, about how music and religion have never been strange bedfellows.

Mirror: When you think about your stuff as spiritual music, regardless of genre, what you do really isn’t that odd.

YLove: Music is no stranger to Judaism, from time immemorial. Immediately after the redemption from Egypt, what’s the first thing that happened? The song at the sea, we learn through tradition, was a freestyle. Everyone was inspired at the same time to sing the exact same words, and that was a miracle. And if a miracle manifested itself that way, we know that God likes musical praise. That being said, I think it is perfectly understandable that eventually hip hop would be a type of music that would be used for that purpose. We know that the Book of Psalms was written using the types of musical instruments which were contemporary to King David’s day. Today we have digital equipment.

Matisyahu: To me, reggae made sense because it was just my life. It was never a joke, or a novelty, or about trying to see parts of myself that are out of place. It’s about recognizing all the parts are part of one whole, one truth. To me, God, religion, spirituality and music are always mixed together.

Psalm pilots

M: What about the specific genres you’ve chosen?

MY: From the time I was a teenager and started listening to reggae music, I felt some pull towards my Jewish roots. One of the main ways I felt the connection—because I didn’t feel it so strongly in Hebrew school—was through reggae, which uses the Old Testament as a strong source of inspiration. They are quoting lines from the Torah, using imagery, ideas. Listening to “Exodus,” say, it resonated very strongly in my soul—like it does for many people, and non-Jews as well because [Bob Marley] was such a truthful person, because he really mastered the art of bringing the Bible out in music. This is something many people have tried to do in many ways, but it is often really contrived. People can sense when people are either using the Bible or using the music to further themselves, or to convince people that their way is the right way. The message in reggae comes across with humility. It’s what King David was doing, creating psalms and singing praise and glory to God through that music, which is what many cultures and nations have done through many styles of music.

Y: I think of hip hop as something international. It’s something that’s definitely spread to all parts of the globe. You can find hip hop in all languages. Being a black MC makes me more understandable in the minds of the audience, but this unfortunately also lends me more to stereotyping. But I think it’s played out. This is not radically new. I am not just some guy making Jewish music. I learned how to rhyme in yeshiva, I continued on to rabbinical school after that. It’s not like Jewish culture isn’t my culture. I’m sitting there eating gefilte fish on Shabbos too. At no point am I any more black than I am Jewish. I don’t ever get to prioritize or classify or turn one on and one off.

There is a polarized feeling that a lot of black Jews go through. Black people represent the ultimate in other. By doing hip hop, and by doing it with Ashkenazi artists, rapping about Torah, in Yiddish, I break down a lot of that otherness. I’m the guy who went to yeshiva with you, rhyming about the same thing that we both learned in the same class. I’m not other. I’m the voice of your community with a different accent.

Matisyahu, Roots Tonic and guests are at Metropolis tonight, Thursday, Oct. 19, 9 p.m., $35, all ages. YLove is at Petit Campus on Thursday, Oct. 26, 8:30 p.m.

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