Matisyahu
Matthew Paul Miller, known professionally as Matisyahu, was born on June 30, 1978 or 1979, in West Chester, a borough in southeastern Pennsylvania situated within the broader cultural landscape of the American Northeast. Growing up in that region, he would later attend White Plains High School before pursuing formal education at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School, and subsequently at Hadar Hatorah, a course of study that placed him at the intersection of secular academic life and religious learning.
Working across reggae and alternative rock, Matisyahu built a career as a singer, rapper, musician, singer-songwriter, and composer whose output was conducted entirely in English. The pairing of reggae's characteristic rhythms with his own vocal and lyrical approach gave his work a distinctive texture within the American music landscape. His range of roles — from performer to composer — reflects a sustained engagement with multiple dimensions of musical production rather than a single, narrowly defined craft.
Beyond music, Matisyahu also worked as an actor, extending his presence into a second performance discipline. This parallel strand of his career placed him among a cohort of musicians who have moved between recorded sound and the screen or stage without abandoning either pursuit entirely. The dual vocations of music and acting together form the documented shape of his professional life, each representing a distinct but coexisting body of work.
As a living subject, Matisyahu continues to be active as an American artist whose career spans the genres of reggae and alternative rock. His educational path — from White Plains High School through Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts and The New School, and on to Hadar Hatorah — traces a trajectory that moved through both secular and religious institutions before he arrived at the stage name and public identity under which he is recognized. That name, Matisyahu, stands as the professional marker of Matthew Paul Miller's ongoing work as a singer, rapper, composer, and actor rooted in the American musical tradition.
Quotes by Matisyahu
If I’ve grown as an artist, it will be represented in the art. There’s no need to explain it.
Some artists are bound to an image: Bob Marley has dreadlocks, Matisyahu has a beard. But that’s a reminder that the whole thing is not about style. It’s about music.
I was into acting as a kid. There was a time when I was 18 that I played the boy in a production of ‘Equus’ in Oregon, and I thought that was going to be my life.
The religious lifestyle keeps you focused. It’s helpful when trying to manoeuvre through the music scene.
We’re so quick to go to make things black and white, and to put things in their box. But everything is this mixture – and that’s what this world is – is this blend of different things.
Is it possible Hanukkah doesn’t inspire folksy songs? Plot lines may be a part. The Christmas story has a lot of material to work with. There’s Jesus and his birth, the wise men, their gifts and tons of frankincense.
When there’s light shining on a tree, that tree takes on different meaning. If there’s no light at all it just looks dead. If you look at light as godly meaning, the world comes alive in a certain way.
Everyone’s right or wrong, Everyone’s got an opinion, put them in a song and let me keep on living.