MATISYAHU: Festival of Light

Creativity is like a fire in a fireplace: You have to tend it or it will go out. For nearly two decades, Matisyahu has kept his creative spirit aflame by evolving his sound, melding genres, and testing the limits of the musical traditions that have inspired him. His latest release, Hold The Fire, and its leadoff single “Fireproof” takes inspiration from a fire dream inspired by Matisyahu's Old Testament religion, which has meant so much to his spiritual and creative life since his recording career began in 2004 and his breakout track "King Without a Crown" blasted into the Billboard charts in 2005. In a roundabout way, those same Old Testament roots springboarded Matisyahu's music career. Growing up outside New York City, the young Matthew Miller followed jam bands like Phish and the Grateful Dead. Then, in Bob Marley and reggae, he found that the messaging of Rastafarianism was sourced in part from that same Old Testament. The sound that emerged on his first albums—including his first two studio releases as well as 2005's Gold-certified Live at Stubb's—embraced both the spirit of reggae and his spirituality and roots in Judaism. Buoyed by hits like "King Without a Crown," albums like the Grammy-nominated and Billboard No.1-ranked Youth in 2006, and the Gold-certified 2009 antiwar hit "One Day" (streamed over 150 million times on Spotify alone), he toured extensively through the second half of the aughts with a high-energy stage show that has since grown to include more improvisation. All the while his music expanded into a shapeshifting collision of reggae, hip-hop, alt rock and boldly inventive pop. Today, he continues to be inspired by evolving musical trends, finding linkages and loops between eras and genres. Matisyahu's spirituality has evolved in parallel with his music, though his Jewish heritage remains a central theme throughout his life and music. The new EP, Hold The Fire (out February 2024), also finds him reflecting on celebrity and artistic success. For Matisyahu, “the unbelievable and miraculous feeling of being connected to our people” is what keeps the creative fire alight.

Levi Robin’s path of wandering and wondering has led him along many roads. From main streets to mystic mountaintops, packed concert halls to huddled rooms full of whispered secrets swaying and hovering above the candle’s glow. Far out, and deep within. Always seeking what — a life lived in quiet commitment to the ever-vanishing horizon, perpetually pushing on beyond each crowded station, always returning home, where stillness speaks in psalmic silence.

Through it all, there was, and is, always music. A method, a medium, a means to the endless. Verses and chords, deserts and shores. Every melody, a memory of another possible future.

Over time, in heart and mind — a story begins to take shape, a song escapes, opens a gate, appears a bridge. A voice calls out from faraway and deep within — familiar and strange, even to itself. A practice of turning, one heart to another, and back again. The invisible art of composing oneself for the good of another. Such a journey, such a dream, such a life, you could even call it music.