World "Youth" Day

We now interrupt our normal programming for this special announcement: G-d's favorite Reggae singer has released his second album.

His name is Matisyahu and the CD, called Youth, was released yesterday. Yes, I've already purchased it. And I never buy whole albums anymore.

To think: a Hasidim of Crown Heights singing the music of Jamaica.... That sound you hear: the heads of SSPXers, exploding.

One reason I love Matis -- who I'll (finally) be seeing in concert in a couple weeks -- is his crossover appeal. I'm told his shows attract everyone from Rastas (to which your humble scribe almost converted in college) to 90 year-old yentas, all without compromising his orthodoxy.

But will we ever see a Catholic version of this -- i.e. an artist with broad appeal irrespective of religion and critical acclaim able to draw wild amalgams of the populace toward his craft and his message? (Sorry, Mel Gibson doesn't count -- he's in schism and, ergo, excommunicated.)

For example, one Matisyahu track from his first album -- Aish Tamid -- is "about the destruction of the Temple, and the eventual building up of the Third Temple that [Jews] are waiting for." And, to an outsider, it's absolutely glorious.... Along these lines, could you imagine a song about, say, the building of St. Peter's that would lure a mass secular audience without being downshouted as "heterodox" by St. Blog's?

Er....

I'm not going to go so far as to say it'll never happen. But if it ever does, then I can sing my Nunc dimittis....

-30-