Techno's Eclectic Origins

As most techno lovers will know, the originators of the genre are Afro-American and from the Detroit area. In light of the Black Lives Matter protests, we like to share a snapshot of the time and place where techno was being shaped by black people, using musical influences from all over the world and from different racial backgrounds.

We think it’s good to remind ourselves of the black origins of our beloved type of dance music, which can be easily overlooked as the music got associated with Berlin in more recent times. Also, we think it’s inspiring to learn how these black innovators were colour blind in their adoption of musical styles around at the time.

You probably heard about the Belleville Three as the first people to spin and produce techno music; Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson and Juan Atkins, who got together living in the town of Belleville, 30 miles from Detroit. The social landscape in which May and Atkins started DJing as ‘Deep Space’ in the early eighties was a very interesting one, as Simon Reynolds describes in Energy Flash (read that book!).

Detroit’s once thriving automobile industry had led to an Afro-American middle class. Skilled workers at Ford or Chrysler could earn a decent living and were able to move to pleasant suburbs like Belleville. However, as Saunderson recalls, the town was mostly white. Black people like them stood out, which brought the three together almost inevitably.

Young confident Afro-Americans with some money developed a party scene in Detroit out of high school social clubs. These societies organized dance parties in all kinds of spaces like bars and restaurants. The party scene, in which techno first developed, was very slick with people dressing up in designer clothes and no conspicuous drug use.

The music played there was a mix of electro-funk like Was (Not Was), Italodisco, English New Wave like Visage and forward-thinking American bands like Talking Heads. The music was obviously very different in style and geography but shared a sense of danceability and the use of synthesizers. And of course, it was made by people of different racial backgrounds, influencing each other.

This was unusual to say the least, in a country where record charts were separated along subtle racial lines. For instance, a R&B chart, a rock chart and a country chart existed alongside each other, serving different audiences. A telling example is what happened when Talking Heads put out a soul classic as a single (Al Green’s Take me to the River). Because the song got in the R&B chart, nobody suspected they were a bunch of white art students.

At the same time, the Midnight Funk Association radio show (with famous DJ Electrifying Mojo) played George Clinton’s P-funk and Prince’s synthesizer funk alongside Kraftwerk, to name just a few. The Belleville Three listened to equally varying music together, from Japan’s early electronic group Yellow Magic Orchestra to Bootsy Collins’ bass driven funk. May recalls the three of them having listening sessions in the dark, followed by lengthy intellectual discussions about the meaning behind the music: ‘Half the shit we thought about, the artists never even thought about themselves!’

So next time you find yourself in a discussion with someone talking about ‘pure’ techno, be aware of its eclectic origins. Musical innovation always starts with the collision and blending of genres and the social scenes associated with them. It’s about looking beyond labels like black and white, or techno and house. Every DJ we talk to turns out to have a broad musical taste, with preferences you wouldn’t associate with their backgrounds immediately.

Text André Kamphuis