"This DJ mixes the world's local Music to create a global sound" PBS NewsHour 9/29/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Jace Clayton, aka DJ/rupture, spends his time traveling, absorbing music as well as creating it.  To create his art, he mixes various melodies and rhythms from all over the world in order to create new, complex sounds.  Jeffrey Brown speaks with Clayton about his new book, “Uproot,” in which he chronicles his travels and journey to amplify musical conversations.

JACE “DJ /RUPTURE” CLAYTON, Author, “Uproot:  Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital Culture”:  So, what I will start off with, scratchy old 45 that I found in Morocco, just kind of randomly dropping the needle on the record.

Let's see.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  What does a deejay do?  Well, Jace Clayton, AKA DJ /rupture, takes musical pieces from around the world, adds his own sounds and mixes them together, creating something that will make you get up and dance, or maybe listen in a brand-new way.

JACE CLAYTON, Author, “Uproot”:  Activating music, you know, keeping music alive.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Each part is alive on its own.

JACE CLAYTON:  Each part is alive on its own, but I love the way in which, when you bring these things into overlap or superimposition, they start talking to each other in new and surprising ways.  And you can tell all sorts of stories with this.

JEFFREY BROWN:  The 41-year-old Clayton graduated from Harvard with a degree in English, but music has been his passion since middle school.

In 2001, he put a mix called “Gold Teeth Thief” on his Web site and was stunned when hundreds of thousands of people around the globe started sharing it.

He's traveled the world ever since, both making music and collecting it, and tells what he's found in a new book, “Uproot:  Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital Culture.”