For more than two decades, Matisyahu has moved through the world as a man divided and reunited — a spiritual seeker, a reggae vocalist, a hip-hop shapeshifter, and an improvisational risk-taker whose live shows walk a tightrope between devotion and chaos. But through every reinvention, one thread has remained unbroken: his Jewish faith.
“Faith is like a big part of creation and creativity,” he says. “The tendency with anything is to try to control and try to grab hold of something — even creativity. But my whole approach to music is the opposite. The song plays me.”
That surrender is rooted in his early years of deep religious observance. He still speaks of those days with reverence: slipping out of Yeshiva on Friday afternoons just long enough to record the tracks that would shape his earliest albums. But Matisyahu’s relationship with faith has matured, loosened, and reshaped itself — as fluid now as the genre-blurring improvisations he’s known for.
On his new album Ancient Child, that evolution takes center stage. The record is less about strict religious doctrine and more about the internal pulse that guides him — something spiritual, instinctual, and deeply rooted in Jewish concepts of humility and trust.
“It’s like you have to let the song speak to you,” he explains. “That initial spurt of creativity might be five minutes or it could be hours with the song on loop. But the music has to tell you first.”
This idea — that music is a vessel for something greater — echoes the mystical traditions he grew up exploring. Kabbalistic themes of emptiness, faith, and surrender permeate the way he talks about the creative process. Even the improvisational risk-taking of his live shows is framed as a spiritual leap.
“You have to have faith in the music,” he says. “One person can’t be trying to control it too much. It has to be a genuine conversation. And then something can happen that’s incredible.”
Matisyahu’s Judaism isn’t just about belief — it’s woven into his artistic identity. It informs the way he collaborates, the musicians he surrounds himself with, and the emotional honesty he brings to the stage. On Ancient Child, even the album artwork reflects that inner landscape. When British painter Andrew Cotton created an image of him tattooed with Jewish symbolism, Matisyahu immediately recognized it as truth.
“He caught it — the vibe,” he says. “It’s a feel and it’s a vibe. The artwork, the merch, the show… it all comes from within.”
If his early career framed him as a curiosity — a Hasidic reggae anomaly — Ancient Child reframes the narrative. Faith isn’t a gimmick or a costume; it’s the internal compass guiding his artistic evolution.
“Moving forward, everything’s about immediacy,” he says. “Making music in the moment. Living with the times. And it’s not being controlled by anyone other than myself.”
In other words: faith, now fully his own, remains the backbeat.
Watch The Full Interview with Matisyahu talking about the new album “Ancient Child” below!
