CONSIDERED OPINION

SARAH PACHTER COURTESY: AISH.COM

Matt Dubb, née Mutti Weiss, began his music career at the age of 17. While in high school he and some friends started jamming in the basement as a pastime. They formed a makeshift band called EvanAl and started booking gigs. It got serious pretty quickly and soon enough they were playing at weddings several nights a week throughout the US and Canada.

As their popularity started to explode, Matt began to dabble with electronic music. While traveling across Europe, he was exposed to more electronic dance music and found a deep connection to it. “In Europe, electronic music is part of the culture. I would hear it everywhere and it just spoke to me. Maybe it should have been (Rabbi Shlomo) Carlebach, but I was in my twenties and travelling and experiencing new cultures and I felt a connection to it. I find it very spiritual. It talks to me like Carlebach.”

He began to DJ under the name Matt Dubb, as in the letter “W” for Weiss, and things began to pick up.

“I came back from Ibiza one summer and felt like I could do this. This music talks to me. I started watching YouTube videos on how to produce electronic music. With my background as a musician, it made the process much simpler. I created my first song in a week.”

Matt put up a few remixes on YouTube and released his first official single with Lipa Shmeltzer, a religious artist, and produced and wrote several other popular songs.

Matt was enjoying some success in the Jewish market and was making connections. A well-known music manager overheard Matt’s music in the studio and said, “This is dope; what is it?” Someone at the studio said, “It’s some kid from Brooklyn and the lyrics are Hebrew.” The manager didn’t understand Hebrew, but felt “this kid” could be successful with a mainstream audience. He approached Matt a few days later and said, “Why don’t you try to produce mainstream music? I can help you.”

Bridging the Gap

“I started producing under a different artist name, MNTII,” he explained, a spinoff from his Hebrew nickname Mutti.

His second record, “Matter of Time” was signed to ARMADA, one of the largest international dance labels, which was founded by Armin Van Burren, who

Judaica quiz answers

1. Aramaic

2. Babylon

3. One may cook on Yom Tov. (Naturally, if a Yom Tov such as Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, Pesach or Shavuot falls on Shabbat – the stringency of Shabbat applies and one is not allowed to cook food)

4. Amos

5. Agriculture (however the opening section deals with prayers and blessings)

6. False – it is the reverse. In Jewish Law, a childless widow should marry her brother-in-law or undergo a ceremony known as Halitzah

7. Rachel Bluwstein