Some African-American pioneers in Detroit feel overlooked today – in a world dominated by feminist Instagram neo-trance and sponsored rich kids throwing cakes in the faces of ravers at stadiums using lame premixed playback – or Beyonce claiming the entire house/LGBT+/club culture on her new album.
Clearly, the veterans are tired of the world making money by standing on their shoulders – dancing in their footsteps. Clearly, Detroit techno comes from Detroit – but does techno come from Detroit? Is techno originally Black?
To talk about race-related origins in a music genre based on sampling is absurd. What about “I Feel Love” Donna Summer & Giorgio Moroder’s prototype hit? To claim techno as originated frem a specific race or city is historical revisionism…and gatekeeping?
Techno is not mine or belongs to a certain afro segment, or are the product of Japanese drum machines – techno is more than the sum of its parts – techno is ours – the bodies and brains that shake when techno is played in a room. Techno is an experience that momentarily suspends time and space, and thus geography. Some will argue that it can also suspend race, gender, and class for a second…a sonic utopia!
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Some would argue that techno is not the music of the future anymore – there are rules now – its a almost nostalgic genre – nostalgia for a lost vision of the future, now reduced to soul-less overcompressed e-arobic dance tools?
So it feels a bit nostalgic to talk about origins and location in a now internet-based global mutated electronic music genre. Isn’t techno just in the head and body of the dancer and listener, us – across continents and races?
Yes, Africa’s funk is important – Kraftwerk is obviously inspired by James Brown’s rhythm section, adding almost romantic European melodies on top – and sound design only possible through access to technology in conservatories and expensive electronic music studios – just as Detroit is clearly inspired by elegant romantic synthpop, cheap gear, sci-fi and European conceptual industrial music. Even proto-techno mutated in all directions – and now we have the internet in our pocket…
For the purist, the party officially starts with Cybotron’s “Alleys of Your Mind” from 1981, which sold 15,000 copies, and A Number Of Names’ “Sharevari”. House finds its nascent form with ‘On & On’ by Jesse Saunders & Vince Lawrence in 1983. But in 1979 Casio merged calculator and synth:
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I can just off the top of my head mention a lot of things that are techno – before Detroit: Japanese and American music technology, German avant-garde and tape manipulation, Indian drone music, Eno’s ambient, Lee Scratch Perrys dubs, Zapp, Yello, James Brown’s funk, disco, Afrobeat, found sounds from film and media, Belgian New Beat, Italo disco, Giorgio Moroder, Electro, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Flash’s “Adventures of the Wheels of Steel” & Steinski, Pink Floyd, Kraut, Industrial, Suicide and DJ megamix culture. Bernie Worrel’s synths, Sweet’s “Fox on the Run” intro, Who’s “Baba O’Rieley” intro, Pink Floyd’s “On the Run,” Pierre Schaeffer’s tape manipulations from 1942 and onwards, cheap Casios, cassette tape pause buttons, Fuzzy, Herbie Hancock’s fuzak, original tribal music – I can go on…
Here’s my personal – strongly generalizing early techno history told in music:
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