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| Derrick May - The Innovator |
Art & Music
Techno - The Birth of Dance Music
By Don Pedro
The story of techno starts somewhere in Detroit. America's Seventh City, once the pride of the golden age of Motown music and motor car manufacturing, had become an industrial ghost town. In the 1980s Detroit seemed an unlikely place for a musical invention.
Contrary to common belief, it was not in the ghettoes of Detroit but in the quiet middle-class town of Belleville, 30 miles outside the city, that three young students were to change the future vision of electronic dance music. Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson would become known as the 'Holy Trinity of Techno' and soon inspire generations to come.
Their sounds weren’t particularly new. But the use of old analog machines and
the rawness of the sound was new. The raw and improvised nature brought a real
energy to their music, which was something that a lot of the earlier music
hadn’t really captured. Now there was a new wave of people pushing the old
machines in different directions.
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| Juan Atkins |
Their sounds weren’t particularly new. But the use of old analog machines and
the rawness of the sound was new. The raw and improvised nature brought a real
energy to their music, which was something that a lot of the earlier music
hadn’t really captured. Now there was a new wave of people pushing the old
machines in different directions.
 The emergence of techno music brought about a
musical art form that was not recognized until Derrick May was faced with the
dilemma of giving this new sound a name for a magazine article.
Techno
Music was born.
From Detroit the music soon emerge in Europe where in the early 90's the
London and German underground mixed techno with the drug ecstasy to deliver a
mutated form of techno music.
 ‘Raves’ spread from clubs to illegal warehouse parties and
into the open fields along London's M25 highway ring attracting tens of
thousands of party-goers. This was something far beyond what the Detroit techno
pioneers had ever experienced.
By the 90s techno had crossed the
English Channel and the Belgian R&S label gave it a start on the continent.
Under the influence of rave culture, the demand for faster releases
grew.
 Hardcore mutations and commercial copies popped up.
When these found their way back to the US it caught the attention of the Detroit
DJ's who soon sought to take their music to another level and to a new front,
Chicago.
Chicago became the testing ground for Detroit's limited releases. The "Windy
City" had a lively club scene and the dance floors that were missing in
Detroit.
 At places like the Warehouse, legendary DJs like Ron Hardy
and Frankie Knuckles were spinning records and inventing new techniques to keep
the dance floor going. The music was house, a continuation of 70s disco, and
jack was the dance.
In
Germany, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, post-cold war enthusiasm mixed with
techno's euphoric futurism. In 1991, the Underground Resistance EP Sonic
Destroyer spawned a new label, Tresor. Named after the famous club, a
former bank vault, Tresor became an institution for techno around the world and
a home for the Detroit artists on the European continent.
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| Kevin Saunderson |
The alliance between decayed Detroit and brutalized Berlin had created a new
way for the techno artists to resist conventional
commercialization.
Techno had left its mark. In cities around the
globe, local artists soon went to find out about the synthesizers and drum
machines that would generate the new sound.
Techno had finally set an
example for independence that would inspire producers around the world and
change the music industry forever. - ArtsyStuff Magazine
next: Techno - The Timeline:
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