The Roots of Techno (1994)

I grew up in Detroit, in the city, and in the early-to-mid 1980s, as teenagers, my friends were spinning records in their basement - which then was almost unheard of, far out on the bleeding edge. I was too unadventurous as a teenager to engage - an old story about how people deal with something new and disruptive: it wasn't music by my rigid definition (I listened to the Beatles, Stones, Zepplin), it was just copying (samples) and buttons (sequencers and drum machines); it was change, it challenged the status quo, and it made me uncomfortable. I grew up to love music, including electronic music, and anything that challenges and expands my mind, but I missed my best opportunity. If I knew then - about change - what I know now.

My friends were into the techno scene at its birth, going to the Music Institute[0] later - an after hours club where the top DJs would spin. One went on to become a successful, wealthy DJ. I only understood it in hindsight, at the first DEMF ...

Here's the history I know, and searching the article for keywords I see much isn't mentioned. There was an incredible overnight DJ at the time, the Electrifying Mojo,[1] who would play anything - A rare Prince cut, followed by AC/DC, followed by Kraftwerk; he also mixed in motivational sermons and love for his young audience (if you're feeling you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot; hold on ...). The story is that the Bellville Three[2] heard Kraftwerk on Mojo and were inspired to create their own music of Detroit - the mechanical rhythm of the factory, "George Clinton and Kraftwerk caught in an elevator, with only a sequencer to keep them company". Mojo later played their music for the city to hear.

Techno was seen by many insiders, at least, as music of young African-Americans. The Bellville Three, the inventors, were African-American, and I believe most of the Detroit scene was black people too. It was a creative, progressive music, unlike the hate and destructiveness of hip-hop. Hip-hop was scene as playing to someone else's role to sell records, the stereotype that society envisioned and found familiar, of violent, angry, ignorant, misogynist young black males out of the central casting of white imagination. It was a great tragedy that society bought the latter - what they expected and maybe wanted - and not the former at the record stores, on MTV, and in their vision of a generation of young people with a certain skin color.

Detroit itself, seen as a cultural backwater, is where one truly revolutionary music after another was invented. Not subtle shifts, but whole new visions: Motown (boring to me, but it was a revolution and it produced Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, and more), punk (rarely credited to Detroit, but the MC5 and the Iggy Pop / The Stooges were first), Funkadelic (George Clinton), techno, and maybe more since. Techno in Detroit didn't stop in the 1980s; several generations continued to create inventive, beautiful, sophisticated electronic music. Look up Carl Craig if you want a starting point.

And despite what you hear, Detroit, in the city, was a great place to grow up. And I was white. Friendly, neighborly, I saw one crime (a kid stealing a bike) and zero race problems in decades. Every time you hear a horror story about Detroit the city, ask where the speaker is from - IME, they are always from the suburbs. People from the suburbs so rarely crossed the city line that parents sometimes wouldn't let playmates visit us. Once I arranged to meet a suburban friend downtown and used the Renaissance Center as a landmark - the equivalent of the Empire State Building or Sears Tower in their cities, but relatively larger in a small downtown - my friend didn't know what it was. The suburbs were a different story, cultureless, featureless, paranoid, monochromatic.

...

When the first Detroit Electronic Music Festival (DEMF) was launched Memorial Day weekend in 2000, the city and I were amazed: A million people came from all over the world, and all were telling us our city was a Mecca for this music. The overwhelming majority had no idea it existed, much less Detroit's place in it. The great DJs and composers were famous around the world, but anonymous in their hometown. In movie script-like moments, they took the stage one after another to the recognition they deserved. Derrick May finally came on stage for the headline slot, and in front of the massive crowd in Hart Plaza in his hometown, started his set with James Brown's The Payback. Thank you Derrick, Juan, and Kevin!

[0] http://music.hyperreal.org/lists/313/08.html

[1] http://music.hyperreal.org/lists/313/09.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_techno#The_Belleville_...

Electronic music trivia, the first pop song with electronic keyboard was Del Shannon “My Little Runaway”[1] in 1961 (cue to 1:10). The keyboard was homemade and based on the Claivioline[2], invented in 1947 by Constant Martine in France.

[1] My Little Runaway https://youtu.be/aOh8NS_2nu4

[2] Clavioline https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clavioline

For those of you reminising over days gone by in electronic music (UK folks for whom Sasha, Judge Jules, Paul Oakenfold and Fatboy Slim were common names) a few links. It's also funny how history is repeating itself.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...

http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2018/03/dom-phillips-in...

Sasha is still going strong of course, my favorite mix of the moment

https://m.soundcloud.com/last-night-on-earth/sasha-presents-...

I am quite familiar with techno culture and this piece is extremely misrepresentative. Reads like a promo piece from the artist's clueless PR agent. Maybe the Detroit scene sees things like this (I am from Europe), but no, techno is definitely not "a combination of technology and funk" or "a term to describe and introduce all kinds of electronic music". Nobody familiar with the scene would refer to drum and bass, dubstep or trance as "techno". I am genuinely surprised both how this can come from an apparently significant record label and how an empty promo piece like this appears in Wired.

On the note of techno culture, B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin[0] is a great documentary/autobiography on the emergence of Berlin techno culture and the Berlin Wall.

[0]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4291066/

the Juan Atkins album from that piece is still sounding super fresh - https://randsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/sonic-sunset

See also this timeless classic:

http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/ (flash)

Ishkur's guide to electronic music. Enjoy!

enjoy

https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/RC-016497/30-jahre-techno/

Detroit Techno was well appreciated by white kids in the UK, I was one of them and I bought most of the Model 500 records, although back then there 'was no internet' so it was pot luck as to what you ended up buying. A 12" single would cost £7.95 or so unless it was re-issued by a European label (e.g. R+S), but, if you were into your traxxx then you would happily pay whatever was asked without even listening to the record first.

Unlike conventional boring records - 'pop', 'rock' - the 12" single would have very little cover art and the music very much spoke for itself. Gender, colour, sexual orientation, none of that mattered really to us white kids in the UK buying techno records. Location mattered though, so records from Detroit, Chicago or New York had that location detail correct. Often because an artist used lots of different names you would later find that 'Model 500' was 'Juan Atkins'. Or you could end up with dozens of Carl Craig records to only later realise that the 'Paperclip People' was also Carl Craig.

What I do find interesting is how music pioneers from that era have moved with the times, or not. Sometimes I see an artist from back then still on the DJ circuit and wonder 'when are you going to get a proper job?'. But this does happen, went to a modern dance performance recently to discover the music was by a techno pioneer from back in the day.

Some artists never made the leap from electronic music to music done purely on the computer. I like to think that back in the day the pioneers would be using the best tools available, so it seems odd to me to still be doing 8 track recording with Roland 808/909/303 gadgets with the flat batteries producing that sound.

Back in the day there was a constant need and appetite for new sounds, there was none of this 'back catalogue' nonsense. Every weekend one had some expectation of hearing entirely new music, better than what had been heard a month ago, fresh and distinctly evolved from what had gone on before. Having a record that was a 'pressing of 1000' was kind of important for that, by the time a song had been taken up by a more common label, e.g. R+S (Belgium), you had heard it already. But then a record on R+S was 'not for the parents' or mainstream, still fairly obscure and unlikely to be found in a 'Our Price' type of High Street record shop. If a track made it onto a compilation CD and sold on a major label in an 'Our Price/HMV/Virgin' shop then you could fairly expect it to be soul-less and extremely poor value for money compared to that £7.95 imported, one of a thousand, bought without listening to first 12" records.

Back in the day many people did consistently spend £50 a week every week on records and graduate with no student debt. People from all walks of life in the UK were brought together with this Detroit (and other) techno. Record shops actually existed including small independent stores that would have fresh stock every week with some genuine customer service going on. Not every Detroit techno track was suited for the dancefloor (or open air field), however, sometimes a track would only work and sound good if you had 40000 watts of sound system to play it on.

In time legislation against music in the UK put an end to the free party scene, things became commercialised with big nightclubs taking over the clientele. These big nightclubs have subsequently died a death and now you get festivals instead, which are in some ways back to the free party idea but still more about spectating than participating. First time round it was definitely about participating.

Nobody spends money on music in this era of downloads and with Shazam there is no longer that captivating track that you hear the once and never know what it was (unless you as the DJ). However, the internet does allow those of us that enjoyed the days of paid for Detroit Techno to finally put some faces to the tracks and find out the history. Living it was better though.

This is interesting. I am the owner of a startup focused on techno and relaying the music history to new listeners can be really hard.

Underground Resistance was an amazing collective

The Roland 303 was made and designed in Japan. Technopolis by Yellow Magic Orchestra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2lOyCxRp5s

Like many things, 'techno' was an international movement built on the shoulders of giants.

But to disregard the 303 from Japan which pretty much defines techno, and Tokyo bands making electronic music with the word techno in their title is silly.

Techno was an international scene from the beginning, and remains so today.

Not to say Detroit, Berlin, and the UK didn't have massive influences - they did.