More in ‘reggae’

Matisyahu released his third album, Light, yesterday, and this time he has added new elements—“electonica, funky pop, straight-up guitar rock and even a touch of folk,” according to the AP—to his trademark Hasidic-inspired reggae. He’s taking some knocks for it at home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn: “Just yesterday I was walking down the street and ...

Hasidic reggae phenom Matisyahu (or, as the Ticketmaster electronic voice calls him, Matis-aya-who), plays New York’s Central Park Summer Stage tomorrow to promote his new album, Light. Matisyahu, who follows in the great tradition of Jews in reggae, told Boston Music Spotlight over the weekend that Light includes “electronic stuff, there’s more organic, singer-songwriter kind ...

Like all modern Jewish art forms, Jewish pop music is often an attempt to recast material, to translate certain stories for new audiences so they aren’t lost. This can be a burden, or it can be a catalyst to explore identity, to experience spirituality, to exorcise nostalgia from the songs that have run through our ...

Dimona is a small village in the Negev, half an hour south of Beersheva. It’s an incredibly small town, less than three square miles, and since it’s in the middle of the Israeli desert, it doesn’t get much in the way of tourists. Mostly, Dimona is known for two things: its nuclear power plant, and ...

In 1994, a trio of Montreal musicians formed the band Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Four years later, by the time of their first album, F#A# (Infinity) (Kranky/Constellation), they had become a nine-piece ensemble of strings, guitars, drums, bass, and more, with a symphonic and immense sound, alternately cacophonous and melodic, full of dynamics and drama. ...

Walking through Brooklyn last summer, some tattered advertising on a scaffolding stopped me dead in my tracks. Peering out from the upper left corner of a red, yellow, and green poster for the annual Reggae Carifest, the giant showcase for the top stars in Jamaican music, was a photo of a bespectacled young man in ...