Tourdrobe

Happy Passover and Easter and Spring Equinox to all! Being that I stuffed myself silly with matzoh ball soup & Manischewitz Blackberry wine and my friends all ate their weight in ham & Peeps, I was thinking about what it means when my friends come over and celebrate with me and vice versa. Can I really appreciate Easter? Can they really understand Passover? I know Jesus isn’t taking my wheel any time soon but does that mean I can’t feel it like Carrie Underwood does? Can there be secular music with a message or is it disguised as religious music for the masses?

Take for example the massive amount of people that showed up to a free concert, yes, kids – free!, given by Matisyahu. If you aren’t familiar with Matisyahu, he’s a young guy who found his true Judaic-self when he was a teen visiting Israel. He also had a penchant for the beatbox, Reggae and hip-hop culture of the 5 Burroughs in New York. He changed his name from Matthew Miller to Matisyahu and began a career based mostly on word of mouth. I’d already seen him open for 311 but this was an opportunity to see him in a more intimate and acoustic venue. The people that showed up ranged from the hippies to the hipsters, the teens to the Quarterlifers, and the Orthodox Jews to the non-religious. It made me think, though, when Matisyahu sings, “Rebuild the temple and the crown of glory, years gone by about sixty,  burn in the oven in this century, and the gas tried to choke but it couldn’t choke me,” can someone whose family didn’t perish in the Holocaust understand what he means and how we feel about Jerusalem and why Israel is so important to us? And when he sings, “Like the sun of a sun ray burning up through a cloud, Torah food for my brain, let it rain till I drown, thunder!” can those who are not well-versed in the 5 Books of Moses truly get it? I think so but I’ll let you decide.

On the flip side, I recently was at a chamber choir concert and they performed a song called “O Sifuni Mungu.” I honestly didn’t have much of an idea as to what they were saying because it’s sung in Swahili. All I knew was that it moved me to no end. I wanted to sing it and dance to it and it almost made me cry. How was I to know that it was about  the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (something that I personally do not have a religious inclination towards)? You take a listen to this Swahili/English version, though, and tell me this doesn’t make you smile and bob your head.

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In all fairness, I think that sometimes we take ourselves too seriously. If I enjoy a song about Jesus, that doesn’t make me a traitor and it certainly doesn’t mean I am turning my back on my religion. I say, let’s be thankful that we live in a country where, regardless of what belief we hold, we are allowed to sing out loud. Until next time, remember it’s your life, live it on tour and make sure someone takes the wheel in case you are to into the singing!