Descrizione
In 2001, on the threshold of the internet age, Jace Clayton is an unknown Boston DJ transplanted to Spain. Without warning and without promotion, one of his mixtapes released on the internet – Gold Teeth Thief, sixty minutes of music “without rhyme or reason” – is downloaded by thousands of people around the world and becomes a cult phenomenon. Clayton begins to be invited to perform in the most distant, bizarre and diverse places, from a nightclub in Zagreb to an art gallery in Osaka, from a former brothel in Sao Paulo to the most prestigious and elegant museums. In this wonderful and damned wandering, Clayton meets musicians and cultural organizers, studio technicians and fans, and above all he listens, listens to everything and everything. The most unusual, original, unpredictable music, the music of a hyper-connected and globalized world but which – deep down – has never seemed so creative and original. Auto-Tune among the Berbers of Morocco, jungle parties in Boston and street weddings in Cairo, Jay Z and Fugazi, Mexican tribal raves between Brooklyn and Monterrey, music for cell phones from the Sahara and for sax from Ethiopia, likembé orchestras and Jamaican sound systems, Do It Yourself and Japanese noise. Welcome to the era of world music 2.0: a world of remixes and more or less undue appropriations, in which traditional instruments are to be thrown into the fire and all you need is a computer – but if necessary also a smartphone or a PlayStation – to make music and spread it. Jace Clayton is the bard of all this, and part of the picture itself. With Remixing his ears become ours, and from the chronicle of these musically adventurous journeys comes a reflection on what music has become in this first glimpse of the 21st century.
