Reggae from the Torah: Ron Wiseman and "Measure for Measure"

I'm Catholic, and if you know anything about Catholics, you'll know that most of us don't know our Bibles or other Catholic religious texts that well.  Oh, there are exceptions.  A friend we knew in San Antonio when we lived there is Catholic and a biblical scholar.  But when it comes to religious texts, we just don't make them a direct part of our lives.  We go to Mass on Sunday's, listen to the readings, and listen to the priest's interpretation of readings, and then go about our merry ways for another week.  Being a good Catholic was always, to me, more about the actions than the words behind the actions.  I don't want to make it sound like the words and texts aren't important - because they provide a basis for what we do.  Every Catholic knows how to paraphrase Jesus' saying "turn the other cheek," in reference to enemies, or other similar parables and morals, and some of us follow the precepts, especially those that are modeled by our parents and other people we respect.  But it is rare for me to find a Catholic that really delves into the text to gain a greater meaning from the words and context.

Which is why people who really get into the texts fascinate me.  If you are Muslim or Jewish, you probably can quote whole passages of the Koran or the Torah by heart.  Part of the rite of passage for a young Jewish boy (and I'm assuming girl though I may be wrong about that) is to recite a long passage of the holy text from memory at the bar- or bat-mitzvah.  And it is even more fascinating to me when people gain mystical experiences from the text, when the text so moves them that they absorb it into their lives and make it a focal point around which life moves.  For me, in Mass, often I'm thinking something else rather than truly listening to the text, and therefore the text becomes a quiet drone in the background of my thoughts, with the occasional sentence or phrase popping through.  So I appreciate, and am even envious, of those that can really find meaning from the religious texts rather than doing some kind of obligatory half attention to them.

That is what happened to our featured artist today, Ron Wiseman.  Born and raised in Winnipeg, Canada and exposed in his childhood to such types of music as rock, r&b and blues, he began playing blues piano as a child.  He worked with some bands as a young adult, and diversified his playing to rockabilly, country and r&b.  he was living in Toronto when he took a vacation to Israel.  While traveling in the hills of Judea, he had a mystical experience which led him to create music that he called Spiritual (or Conscious) Reggae based on the words of the Torah and other Jewish religious texts.  He came back to Canada, began putting songs together and playing them in his club gigs.  The result was a mixture of reggae, ska, rock and blues and which earned him the unofficial title of "the king of Jewish reggae."  His website says that he interprets sacred texts through the eyes of a musician who has experienced love and suffered loss.  He has shared the stage with Kinky Friedman, recorded in Jamaica with Sugar Minott and has built a following of fans from many backgrounds, religions, and ethnicities.  He is currently a resident of Tel Aviv, Israel.  This song, Measure for Measure, is off his 2005 release Mystical Mood.