Matisyahu Reggae Quotations

When I was 17, I listened to reggae music. I loved Bob Marley. I started growing dreadlocks. It's always been my way, that the outside matches what's going on with me inside.

One of the first places where I started to respond to song lyrics was in reggae music. A lot of what I was responding to were references to the Old Testament. It was not that I had to adapt the lyrics to the sound. Reggae and the Old Testament are bound up together. There wasn't anything that I had to do.

My mother's sister married a man from Barbados, and my cousins were raised in Barbados. So we traveled down there, they came up every summer for camp, and I started paying attention to their music. And that was the first place I ever remember hearing reggae and liking it.

Reggae music isn't Jewish, but a lot of the ideas are.