Features

Genre Breakdown: Detroit Techno

Patrick Ong

Oct 13, 2022 — 5 min read

While Chicago was busy rocking the house, Detroit started its own musical revolution. Detroit techno had some of the makings of Chicago house music, with its four-on-the-floor rhythm pattern and prevalent use of electronic instruments. It deviates further by leaning more into the electronic space with its European-inspired use of synthesizers and literal outer space with an Afro-futurism/science fiction motif. The genre is a gathering of global sounds that transformed into a unique coalescence and spat it back into the world. Its legacy extends across oceans, but its home will always be the Motor City.

Did techno originate in Detroit?

The term “techno” derives from author Alvin Toffler and his book “The Third Wave,” which in part details how people who use technology, or “techno rebels,” will make manual labor less viable. This ideology spread as early ‘80s technology continued to advance across different regions–mainly Europe–thus providing the foundational subject matter that founded the genre. Despite its overseas influence, the techno’s origin took place in Detroit.

Underground Detroit radio personality The Electrifying Mojo started mixing German and Belgian electro-pop music with national east coast electric funk and post-disco music on his show “The Midnight Funk Association.” The combination of contrasting sounds fell into the hands of three musically-inclined Belleville High School students known as the Belleville Three, who created a new sonic identity unlike any of their predecessors.

The trio consisting of Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, and Derrick May combined the sounds of two continents and their convening embrace of technology. One of their main inspirations was Kraftwerk, a German band that experimented with vocoders, drum machines, and synthesizers. Many recognize Kraftwerk as pioneers of the electronica genre, as their subject matter revolved around the time’s rapid development of technology like public transportation or using a home computer. Between electronic music and artists like Parliament Funkadelic, Prince, and The B-52’s, the Belleville Three had enough inspiration and interest in music to pick up DJing and production. The intense need for expression hit a breaking point when the Three traveled to Chicago to check out its house scene and meet DJs Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy.

Atkins met Richard Davis in community college, where they formed Cybotron and the record label Deep Space. After early success, Cybotron split, and Atkins (operating under the name Model 500) founded another label, Metroplex. Saunderson, May, and other techno pioneers joined Metroplex before leaving to form individual record labels.

With the techno revolution on the horizon, the Belleville Three seemed splintered. May, under the name Rhythim is Rhythim, released “The Strings of Life,” one of history’s most iconic Detroit techno songs. It was a marriage between Chicago house and Detroit techno: a vivaciously bouncy, tech-forward track, which Knuckles named himself. Though many saw Detroit sound as the city’s take on Chicago house music, “The Strings of Life” foreshadowed how the genre would soon secede.

May and future Kool Kat Records boss Neil Rushton began working on a compilation album called The House Sound of Detroit. The Belleville Three had since resolved their differences and collaborated for this record, with Saunderson (as Inner City) adding “Big Fun” and Atkins adding “Techno Music.” The trio decided to change the compilation album’s name to Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit. While slow to take national attention, it was a record that eventually introduced everyone to the Detroit techno sound.

Detroit techno swept the late 80s and early 90s, becoming fairly popular in the United Kingdom and Germany. After it was out in the world, the genre freely evolved and diverged.

In 2000, downtown Detroit’s Hart Plaza hosted its first annual Detroit Electronic Music Festival. Through a dispute between its founder, Carol Marvin, relinquished control to May and Carl Craig, the father of Detroit techno’s second wave of popularity. Throughout a couple of shifts in leadership (and ensuing name changes), Detroit’s annual Movement Electronic Music Festival ran for 10+ years, and post-hiatus, eventually returned this past May 2022. Detroit techno was home, yet again.

What does Detroit techno sound like?

British DJ, producer, and half of the Freemasons duo James Wiltshire described techno using a suitable metaphor: “if house is a feeling, techno is a landscape.” House music mostly started as a combination of drums, pianos, and soul vocals or samples. Though that largely remained in early Detroit techno, the genre has significantly grown since its days in Belleville High School.

Early Detroit techno takes influence from everywhere: European electronica, New York post-disco, P-Funk, and more. Take the previously mentioned “Big Fun” by Inner City and listen to the opening synth. It sounds eerily similar to the opening vocals of George Clinton’s “Atomic Dog” (and would be borrowed by Dr. Dre later for “Who Am I? (What's My Name?)" by Snoop Doggy Dogg). Conversely, many speculate that Cybotron’s “Clear” sampled Kraftwerk’s “Home Computer” around the same time Afrika Bambaataa did–and two decades before Timbaland did for Missy Elliot’s “Lose Control.”

Nowadays, it’s even more open to interpretation. For a moderately new genre (by genre standards), techno has split into different types of subgenres, genre fusions, techno-inspired music to appeal to a broad audience, and microscopically niche techno that only appeals to a select amount of people. One crucial constant, however, should never be forgotten when discussing American-born techno: it is, at its core, a genre rooted in Black culture.

Detroit has a deep history of economic turmoil. In the 1950s, it totaled almost 2 million residents–about the fifth-largest city in America. It was home to General Motors and its workers before the 1960s building boom swapped inner-city white residents to the suburbs and black residents to the city. Racial tensions grew as auto unions encouraged discriminatory hiring practices and white communities fought to segregate their neighborhoods while blocking public school funding. Detroit’s auto industry plummeted–so to cut corners, they used automated workers (sound familiar?) while others abandoned the factories for ruin.

Techno was, in a sense, an escape from the impoverished land black Detroit residents still hold in their hearts. By reclaiming the futuristic sounds of techno, they take agency over the technology that has wronged and isolated them. Cut ties with the Motown-inspired R&B and soul but embrace and build the Afrofuturism we idealize. Atkins talked about techno as an opportunity and experiment, but he could have also nonconsciously voiced his frustrations with his environment and times.

“As the price of sequencers and synthesizers has dropped, so the experimentation has become more intense…[We're] tired of the R&B system, so a new progressive sound has emerged. We call it techno!”

Soul and R&B elements remain in Detroit techno but in a much fewer capacity. Crooning and love ballads were on the way out, Afrofuturist grooves were walking through the door. Detroit techno encouraged notes in the Phrygian mode (to make it sound more dastardly), distortions, filters, and detuning. It evolved into a musical cyborg–a perfect (or imperfect) blend of human and machine.

Modern and Post-Modern Detroit Techno

Detroit techno is still very young. The Belleville Three are still alive and play live sets, sometimes together. The second wave of Detroit techno persists with Carl Craig, Underground Resistance, and Blake Baxter in their middle ages while other veterans like Jay Denham and Moodymann are still actively releasing music. DJ Minx ushers the new generation of female techno DJs with her Women on Wax Recordings label.

Predicting where Detroit techno is going remains a difficult task because Detroit techno is still mainly here. Yes, it is constantly innovating but at the same time, it is still consistent. Many of their legends still walk the earth, mentor the next generation, and play shows. To get a comprehensive sense of the sound, Movement is back and seems primed for next year. The city, its artists, and its music scene continue to raise their hands in the air whenever possible.

Detroit techno has always reflected the development of Detroit itself–the city that also founded Motown–as its technology advances, as it earns its “Motor City” alias, as it braves social injustice, and lastly, as it continues to persevere.