
The Roots of Techno (1994) - doener
https://www.wired.com/1994/07/techno/
======
DEEtroit
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](http://music.hyperreal.org/lists/313/08.html)

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

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

------
paulsutter
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](https://youtu.be/aOh8NS_2nu4)

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

------
gary__
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...](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/arts-
entertainment/music/features/when-djs-ruled-the-world-5434135.html%3famp)

[http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2018/03/dom-phillips-
in...](http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2018/03/dom-phillips-interview)

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

[https://m.soundcloud.com/last-night-on-earth/sasha-
presents-...](https://m.soundcloud.com/last-night-on-earth/sasha-presents-
last-night-on-earth-show-040-august-2018)

------
Legogris
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/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4291066/)

~~~
insickness
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.

~~~
poisonarena
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)

"Get with it!" \- Dynamik Bass System

Here is a source: [http://techno.org/electronic-music-
guide/](http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/)

~~~
louthy
> and Jungle came from the 1980's ragga scene.

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.

~~~
louthy
>> 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.

------
sideb0ard
the Juan Atkins album from that piece is still sounding super fresh -
[https://randsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/sonic-
sunset](https://randsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/sonic-sunset)

------
awiesenhofer
See also this timeless classic:

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

Ishkur's guide to electronic music. Enjoy!

------
notindexed
enjoy

[https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/RC-016497/30-jahre-
techno/](https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/RC-016497/30-jahre-techno/)

------
Theodores
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.

~~~
jdpigeon
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.

------
throwaway12iii
The Roland 303 was made and designed in Japan. Technopolis by Yellow Magic
Orchestra:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2lOyCxRp5s](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.

------
bfuller
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.

~~~
33degrees
As someone into both techno and startups, i’d like to hear more!

~~~
spiralx
Indeed, same here!

------
pmcpinto
Underground Resistance was an amazing collective

