Uproot

Starred review from May 16, 2016
In this exhilarating book, Clayton, aka DJ Rupture, guides readers on an international tour of various forms of music and music-making technologies within many cultures. Clayton travels to Morocco, for example, to find musicians using Auto-Tune, a technology that alters the pitch of recorded music or vocals; he discovers that the one element uniting the disparate uses of Auto-Tune is the voice itself, which “sings out at the heart of the contest between what we’ve inherited and what we may yet become.” Clayton explores the ways that music travels these days and its international accessibility, observing that it’s sometimes easier to buy Jamaican music in Japan than in Jamaica. He examines how corporate sponsorship compromises music, praising the band Fugazi for its resistance to such compromises and pointing to the band’s success with a do-it-yourself approach to recording, distribution, and promotion. Clayton urges readers to embrace the power of music, recognizing its energetic and enduring capacity to capture and express shared emotions and to become a “memory palace with room for everybody inside.”

June 15, 2016
Sharply detailed exploration of how technology and globalization have transformed participatory audio culture for top-dollar DJs and African ensembles alike.Clayton, a contributor to n+1 and the Washington Post, among other publications, has toured and recorded as DJ/rupture, reflecting a lifelong obsession with the behind-the-scenes functionality of popular music. "I've spent time in music venues all over the world," he writes, "from bacchanalian raves in Bristol to Egyptian street weddings." His fundamental thesis is that the current pessimism (and shaky finances) surrounding the music industry conceals remarkable opportunities. "For each of the avenues closed down by the proliferation of digital technology, unexpected new pathways have opened up," he writes. Though his cultural perspective seems sprawling, this collection is cohesively structured: each essay examines different technological innovations alongside the far-flung musical subcultures utilizing them to leapfrog past relative obscurity. For example, he discusses the controversial song-polishing program Auto-Tune via its embrace by Moroccan Berber pop musicians: "Auto-Tune sound tracks...a bucolic nation made real only in its digital diaspora." Similarly, Clayton examines how a Brooklyn entrepreneur became a promoter and archivist of the music he'd collected off discarded Saharan cellphones, while controversial self-taught "cut and paste" rapper M.I.A. "sliced across style lines to become [a] must-hear secret." The author occasionally delves into his own wry tales of incongruous experiences as a globe-trotting DJ, but he minimizes such personalization by focusing on the nitty-gritty of musicianship, showing off the gearhead obsessiveness and deep playlists essential to his career. Clayton writes adeptly about more forms of music than his DJ identity might suggest, contrasting the communities developed by underground rock ensembles like The Ex and Fugazi with the alienating experiences of obscure acts abruptly "discovered" by the hipster hype machine--e.g., Konono No. 1 or Omar Souleyman. "Musical innovation and excitement," he writes, "emerge from a community experience, wherein the most groundbreaking or influential artists are rarely the most lauded." An engrossing tour of the global cutting edge, balanced between memoir, musicology, and technology.

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Starred review from July 1, 2016

This new title by Clayton (FADER), aka DJ/rupture, is a fantastic book that examines the implications of contemporary digital culture on the creation, dissemination, and business of music around the world. Clayton is extremely knowledgeable about global music and conducts several case studies on the intersection between newer technologies (Auto-Tune, cell phone apps, FruityLoops, the digital vinyl system) and older ones (shellac discs, vinyl records, CD-Rs, and transcoded MP3s) and how they affect non-Western music. He embeds himself in several global communities such as the Berbers (Morocco), Jamaican reggae and DJ culture, the mahraganat music of the Cairo suburbs, the participatory cumbia sonidera of New York City, and the tribal guarachero dance music of Mexico City, illustrating how both new and outmoded systems work within and without the corporatized centers of the industry. In the process, the author wonderfully straddles the line between being a supporter and a detractor of the ways these technologies have fundamentally altered how we create, remix, experience, and consume this art form. VERDICT Clayton's progressive yet sensible perspective on music in the digital era is a must for any library's music literature collection. [See Prepub Alert, 2/1/16.]--Brian Flota, James Madison Univ., Harrisonburg, VA

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2016
As the globe-trotting DJ Rupture, Clayton has performed in more than three dozen countries, witnessing the profound upheaval digital culture has had on disparate peoples across the globe. And while it has been widely discussed how the transition from analog to digital has played havoc on the traditional music industry, Clayton notes that for each of the avenues closed down by the proliferation of digital technology, unexpected new pathways have opened up. In many ways, the advent of the digital has leveled the playing field. He criticizes the marketing of the unhelpful and patronizing label world music, but makes a case for World Music 2.0, a product of microcultures from obscure corners of the Internet. Easy access to sophisticated tools, previously only available to a select few, has created opportunities for producers from formerly remote cultures (some of whom have only recently acquired electricity), allowing, for example, Auto-Tune to proliferate among the Berbers of Morocco. Taking us to Kinshasa, Kingston, Cairo, Monterrey, and Beirut, Clayton provides a much-needed global perspective. Match with Ben Ratliff's Every Song Ever (2016).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)