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!
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.
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.
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.
>"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"
I'm not sure why you would be disputing this.
Historically that part is correct and non-misrepresentative at all. Derrick May even has pretty famous quote that.
[techno is]"like George Clinton and Kraftwerk caught in an elevator, with only a sequencer to keep them company."
Afrika Bambaataa and Arthur Baker were also very much influenced by Kraftwerk's peculiar "funkiness"(Planet Rock)[1] and what was coming out of the South Bronx at that time influenced Detroit Techno as much as the European influences. And Kraftwerk themselves were also influenced by James Brown[2]. It doesn't get any funkier than that. And then of course there is P-funk which was a huge influence on electronic music(Bernie Worell alone for that matter.) And P-Funk has root in the JBs - James Brown's band.
Honestly this is really less about just knowing "techo culture" and a lot more about music history.
Techno was the precursor for drum and bass, dubstep and trance. Back in the day, it all existed under the rubric of 'techno.' That was the generic name for it.
And it did originate in Detroit. Kraftwerk and others were early adopters based on what was happening in detroit.
'Techno' was definitely not the generic name for everything before Drum & Bass, Dubstep, and Trance.
Jungle was the precursor to Drum n Bass, and Hardcore/Rave were the precursors to Jungle. Rave came from Belgian techno and Acid House. Acid House came from House.
Techno and House developed in parallel to each other (in Detroit and Chicago respectively). House coming from Disco origins, Techno coming from Disco and European electronica (Kraftwerk) - and Prince (yep, really).
Dubstep is much later and was actually a product of UK Garage, which grew from the Drum n Bass scenes.
If you have access to BBC (UK), there's a 3 part series on the history of EDM. The first episode was shown last week and it touched- quite significantly- on the Detroit scene:
>"Kraftwerk and others were early adopters based on what was happening in detroit."
This is backwards. Detroit was very much influenced by Kraftwerk and the Eno produced stuff- specifically Autobahn and Trans Europe Express which were mid 1970s.
I disagree completely, drum and bass came from Jungle music, and Jungle came from the 1980's ragga scene. Classic Trance came from High Energy and Italo Disco..
You might even say techno and detroit techno was inspired by electro/electrofunk/early hip hop music (MANY OF THEM SAMPLING KRAFTWERK, not the other way around)
Not really, it heavily sampled the dub basslines and ragga vocals from that scene, but it grew out of the hardcore/rave scene. The hardcore scene had already been heavily using the dub basslines, it was just the vocal element and the more two-step oriented and heavily 'chopped up' Amen breaks that distinguished jungle from the sound of rave which was a more straight break-beat, with lots of analogue synth stab lead riffs.
The hardcore/rave scene grew directly out of the Belgian techno and acid-house scenes.
> Classic Trance came from High Energy and Italo Disco..
That's a real stretch too. Trance and techno were almost the same thing in the early 90s, with the likes of Jam & Spoon - Stella. They clearly share the same origins. The shite that came later (Euro trance) is not what I would call the 'original' trance.
> Here is a source
Inskur's guide is well known to be full of errors, I wouldn't use that as a source.
>> Classic Trance came from High Energy and Italo Disco..
> That's a real stretch too.
I'm going to row back a bit on this absolutist comment. The origins of trance were definitely Goa in the mid-80s and had chopped up Italo Disco, Disco, and Hi-NRG (chopped up to remove the vocals, extend them, and make them more 'trancedental'). So, I will admit that it's where trance came from. And in some ways it always stayed 'parallel' to the other scenes, and always had a certain hippy-vibe to it (well, until Ferry Corsten got hold of it).
But, the actual production style moved pretty far away from the Italo/Disco/Hi-NRG sound - and I would consider trance from the 90s onwards to be fundamentally 'techno with pads' as they share so much in common.
And, so that's why I think it's debatable what the origins of the production are, if not necessarily the origin of the scene.
This is from 1994. My recollection is that the average American of that time would refer to any electronic music as “techno”, especially if it had a strong beat. Checking a few cultural markers (Wipeout and its soundtrack: 1995. Pi, the first movie I saw with a soundtrack full of the music I was listening to: 1998.) matches my memories.
I completely missed the "from 1994" part (tag was not there at the time of my comment). Things have changed and I don't have my music history down it seems.
But Kraftwerk was still first, no?
The Wipeout packaging and some in-game graphics were made by The Designers Republic, which also designs the EP/LP covers for Autechre (which is featured in the movie Pi).
Note how awful the design actually is from a 'user experience' point of view.
Most record sleeves of 'Warp Records' were from the 'Designers Republic', with both companies being Sheffield Based. Every one of the creations from Designer's Republic was awesome and cool. Just seeing the Warp logo going round at 33 RPM had some statement value.
I do find it funny that looked at objectively the web version of the Designer Republic legacy is so far off the mark of 'good design'.
By the time their work made it to WipeOut they had already become a pastiche of themselves, all of the best work was probably to be found on Warp Records from the early nineties.
I too am from Europe and I organized my first commercial techno party in Berlin in 1997 and every single artist named Atkins as a pioneer wrt electronic club music.
Wrt your music categories, your ontology is screwed just by its existence: Dutch techno would pass as hard-tek in the US or UK and as gabber in Germany. Lots of Central and South African DnB would pass as triphop in Western Europe.
When I moved from organizing local to international events, I had to learn the hard way that the categorizations of electronic music are a very national thing (probably influenced by the few magazines per country that wrote about it at all).
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.
Just to chime in a bit on that point of never coming across captivating tracks that you haven't heard before.
I went to a nightclub a little while ago where one of my favorite DJs (Project Pablo) was spinning. I'd worn out every one of the guys' releases on streaming services and spent hours and hours listening to music in the genre (via Google Play Music radio suggestions, etc.) and I didn't hear a SINGLE song that I recognized over the three hours. I left totally thrilled and optimistic that there's still this underground culture of DJs being able to play sounds in the club that you've never heard before.
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.
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_...