INTERVIEW: This year, Matisyahu is attempting to hold the fire
Photo: Matisyahu’s new EP is called Hold the Fire. Photo courtesy of Juliana Ronderos / Provided by Press Here with permission.
Matisyahu, the reggae rocker who has found tremendous success over a long career, is back with a new EP called Hold the Fire. The songs on this recording are a preview of things to come for the accomplished singer and musician. He has been busy working with new producers and collaborators, and their efforts have paid off with 40 new tunes, which will be released in a succession of singles and EPs, many of them centered on the four elements: earth, water, fire and air.
“I just was ready to start making more music,” Matisyahu said in a recent phone interview. “And so I had a new management team. They started setting me up with different producers that they worked with, some producers that I’ve worked with, but I kind of wanted to work with some new people on this round. There’s something called SongCat, and it’s a company that has a bunch of different artists, producers, engineers, writers across the board. And I kind of let them know what style of music I was into, what I liked, who my influences were, what were the songs that were really moving me and what kind of music I was trying to make, and they started sending me beat packs, which are thousands and thousands of different tracks. And I started going through a lot of them, or sometimes meeting with different producers and writing the music together from scratch.”
After this initial collaboration, Matisyahu turned to writing sessions. A group of people would come over his house, and they would throw on a beat or two. Then the ideas started flowing back and forth, and he repeated this exercise several times, whether it was in New York City or Los Angeles. Sometimes they were in the room together; other times they were on Zoom. These sessions, lasting six months, produced 40 songs, and Hold the Fire is the first batch.
“We never really thought of doing it as an LP, but more as just releasing music,” the singer said. “I think at some point we were just going to release everything as singles, but then I got the idea that the elements are a big theme in the music — four elements, four directions, 40 songs. I’m going to kind of break them up into different groupings, but some of them lean in different styles more than others. Some are leaning a little more pop; some are leaning a little more Afro-pop; some are leaning a little more hip-hop; some are a little more reggae. They all are kind of blending genres, but I figured I’d group them together and release them that way.”
Matisyahu is a musician who constantly reinvents himself. He jumps from one genre to the next. He offers rock songs, reggae songs, rock-reggae songs and everything in between. He’ll redo older songs in acoustic versions, and he’ll never give his fans the same thing twice. This makes his art eclectic, surprising and ever-evolving. He’s known for paying homage to his spirituality and Judaism faith, along with other ideas and commentaries on the world, according to his biography. He is a musician who absorbs what the world has to give and reflects on his gifts when creating his songs. At the heart of what he does is art-making and peaceful vibes, showcased in a voluminous catalog that includes hit tunes like “One Day” and “King Without a Crown.”
This new EP allowed Matisyahu the chance to change directions, and that was a welcome journey for the singer.
“For me, a lot of times the writing process was more of a one-on-one type of situation, just me and the producer, or just me writing lyrics to a beat, or something like that,” he said. “This definitely was a new experience for me. I was really working with a ton of individuals. I probably worked with about 100 people during that time, and moving forward in the way that music is being listened to now, the idea of releasing an album and then not releasing another album for a year or two or three — sometimes I have four or five years between albums — just doesn’t really work, doesn’t make sense. And I never really enjoyed releasing music that way. I always felt like it should be released as you make it because that’s what you’re going through at the moment, and you should be out there singing those songs when they come out and performing them. So, it’s kind of what we’re doing now, and it feels much more connected.”
The four elements, which are a centering point for this new music, have been on Matisyahu’s mind lately. He sees earth, water, fire and air as a metaphor for life. “It’s definitely one of the things that I came across in studying Torah, Jewish mysticism,” he said. “A lot of elements are used in there. There are Four Holy Cities in Israel that are connected to elements. … I think that’s where I picked up on it mainly. I started using it as a metaphor.”
And true to his word, Matisyahu is not sitting on these new tunes and waiting to unleash them on the audience. He is currently touring the United States, and he begins each set with some new songs off the EP. “Last night I tried the Radiohead method of playing the new songs first and then leading up into the rest of the catalog, and that seemed to work tremendously,” he said. “So I think I’m going to stick with that. I basically played six new songs last night. Outside of the EP, we have ‘Ripples’ that came out. That was the first song I released before the EP, and then I have another song called ‘The Scent’ that we’re releasing in March. It’s about antisemitism. I made the video in Israel when I visiting with survivors from the Supernova festival at the site of the kibbutz, and it’s going to be a pretty powerful piece. I’ve been performing that one live as well.”
That recent trip to Israel to meet with survivors has left an indelible memory in Matisyahu’s mind, and the experience will be reflected in his art. “It was powerful,” he said of the trip. “It was very intense. It was devastating to hear the stories directly from people who went through it. It was also very hopeful because in the world right now it’s very, very dark in terms of the outlook for Jews right now in terms of antisemitism and misunderstanding of the conflict that we’re going through, but being in Israel, being around Israelis definitely gave me a new hope because they’re so incredible and resilient.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Matisyahu’s new EP is called Hold the Fire. Click here for more information.
