Techno Was Invented in Detroit

We are at the heart of reality for African Americans: the company headquarters of Underground Resistance, also the distribution center for Submerge, a record store and unofficial techno museum in the city of Detroit, is located at 3000 E Grand Boulevard, not far from the Amtrak bus station and opposite the house of Kenny Dixon Jr., better known as Moodymann. 

That's relevant here, because in January 2019, Kenny Dixon Jr. was threatened on his own land by 10 armed police officers. The reason? They doubted that the house and the car parked in front of it could really belong to him. Just another day in the life of Black America. 

You always have to remember all this when you talk about Detroit and its music scene. Hardly another city in the world is so synonymous with the birth of original music—it was in Detroit that both soul and techno first saw the light of day—and in no other city is the dark side of success so immediately obvious. 

Harris was born 30 minutes' drive from Detroit, in Ann Arbor. In a land of vast metropolitan regions, Ann Arbor is an outpost of Detroit. The town is known among other things for the University of Michigan, the band the Stooges, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, the label Ghostly International, and the artist Mike Kelley. Like so many other residents of Detroit, Harris is quick to admit when you talk to him that, in his childhood, he wanted nothing more than to leave Detroit as quickly as possible. And, because Harris is a man of action, he did leave the city, the day after he graduated from the University of Michigan. 

But it didn't last long: he returned from his travels around the world feeling a strong commitment to his home city. When he was away from it, he realized what fantastic things were going on in Detroit, how many independent and influential artists the city could boast. "A label like Motown and all its great musicians are part of that story. For a long time I didn't understand that that was something special." 

At first he wrote press releases and artist biographies, but soon he became the heart and soul of the business, thoughtfully guiding its fortunes and ensuring that its story would be written in the right way.

It's not just since the Black Lives Matter movement that people have been talking about how the story of electronic music has not been truthfully recorded. So let's put it on the record once again: Techno was invented in Detroit!

In a post-disco climate, where old stadium rock paradigms were being reprocessed, and influenced by European styles like EBM, new beat, and synth pop, three teenagers in Detroit—Juan Atkins (nicknamed the godfather of techno; part of Cybotron and Model 500), Kevin Saunderson (KMS Records, Inner City), and Derrick May (Transmat)—also known as the Belleville Three, after the high school that they all went to, invented something new and original. They were what is called the first wave. 

Jeff Mills, Mike Banks, and Robert Hood followed a generation later. They created the blueprint for Underground Resistance, an artistic collective with precisely defined esthetic and political values—militant in their appearance, wearing hoodies and masks, loud in their battle cry against drugs and violence. They made up the second wave. 

In The Sound of Family—Berlin, Techno, and the Fall of the Wall by Felix Denk and Sven von Thülen, Banks gives an insight into their influences: "Underground Resistance was built on the strength of Public Enemy and a love for the German precision of Kraftwerk." 

That's how Hood explains it, and says: "But we were also against the music industry, the corporate world that steals your soul. Our attitude was confrontational: we will not compromise. We will not be controlled, we're taking control. Malcom X meets Kraftwerk."

So the group positioned itself explicitly in the evolutionary line descended from the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. Conforming, even deferring like previous generations had done, was not an option: this generation of artists wanted to keep hold of the rights to their own work and not hand them over to dubious businessmen and corporations.

It's noticeable that women are sadly underrepresented in the Detroit story—Terri McQueen. Under her stage name Whodat, the DJ is one of the most highly regarded acts worldwide, especially among other DJs and music diggers. 

"We were in our friend Raybone's cellar, that was our place for chilling out and listening to records. I had never played any records, I just hung out there, talked shit, and listened to music. One day, Raybone said: "T, you've never played any records—that's going to change today!" The others, Wilhite, Pittmann, and so on simply took records and mixed them on to the previous one. Regardless of what they were. So that's what I had to do, even though I hadn't had a scrap of experience—and I didn't want to ask. 

I picked up the Sony headphones, which were broken on one side, sat at the Numark mixer and the two Technics 1200, and fumbled around until I thought the two records were put together. "Was that right?" They were looking at me as if I was an alien. Wilhite was the first to find his tongue again: 'Man, are you sure you've never played records before?'—'F**k y’all.' We laughed," says McQueen, coolly recounting the moment of her initiation which took her to where she is today. 

Pittmann had to keep pushing her so she didn't give up—from embarrassment or something—but eventually she had to accept that she was good. From then on, McQueen has kept working on her technique, hanging out in the right record shop (Rick Wilhite's shop, which unfortunately had to close in 2010 after 20 years) and eventually beginning her own productions.  Her first single came out in 2013 on the Uzuri label.

People even know the name Whodat in Cologne. That's thanks to the Cologne-based artist and musician Viola Klein. Back in 2012 she invited McQueen to play a DJ set as part of an exhibition at the Mathew Gallery in Berlin. This artistic friendship with Klein continues to this day and is reflected in mutual appreciation and contributions to each other's records. 

For McQueen, Detroit is not just home but still a very special musical place—although she explicitly doesn't want to reignite the old debate about waves: 
"What is a wave supposed to be? 
Who starts a wave?
 Who keeps it going? Where is the wave?" 

Nevertheless, McQueen also understands the city's heritage. When asked who sums up Detroit techno for her, she refers sadly to Mike Huckaby, who died of coronavirus in 2020. He was not just an icon for her but also a friend. And, for her, it's in precisely these friendships between artists in Detroit that the charm of the city lies.

However, McQueen would not be the celebrated DJ Whodat if she didn't end on a high note: So what distinguishes Detroit from other big cities on the techno music scene? "Detroit has the groove!"