Detroit: The City Where Techno Was Born

Three Friends from Belleville

Belleville is a small town outside Detroit. Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson went to school there, and today they are known as the "Belleville Three." They were Black middle-class teenagers who listened to the radio, collected records and dreamed of something beyond their local reality.

Juan Atkins, the eldest, was the pioneer. In the early 1980s he recorded as Cybotron with Richard "3070" Davis. Their tracks "Alleys of Your Mind" (1981) and "Clear" (1983) were electronic music full of futuristic themes. Atkins later founded the label Metroplex, and his 1985 record "No UFO's," released as Model 500, is considered one of the first true techno tracks.

Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson followed similar paths. May recorded as Rhythim Is Rhythim, Saunderson as Inner City, among other names. Each also founded a label: May's Transmat and Saunderson's KMS. May's "Strings of Life" (1987) and Inner City's "Big Fun" (1988) are still club anthems.

Where the Sound Came From

There were several influences. On one side was funk, including George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic; on the other, European electronic music such as Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder. Radio mattered too. The legendary DJ Charles Johnson, known as The Electrifying Mojo, played a mix of funk, rock and electronic music on a Detroit station, ignoring genre boundaries. Atkins simply saw what he did as music of the future. The word "techno" itself was drawn partly from the ideas of futurist Alvin Toffler, whose books Atkins read.

Why Detroit

Detroit was the capital of the American car industry. From the 1960s and 1970s the city was losing residents and jobs, and factories gradually emptied. That landscape is often linked with the sound of techno: mechanical, repetitive rhythms and a cold machine aesthetic, yet also hope and imagination about a different future.

There was also access to affordable gear, such as synthesizers and drum machines like the Roland TR-808 and TR-909, and the city's musical tradition, tied to Motown.

What Remains

Detroit techno quickly found an audience in Europe. The compilation "Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit" (1988), released in the UK, helped introduce the sound to the world. For many Europeans it was a discovery, though in Detroit itself the scene stayed relatively small. Remember this: techno began as music of dreams about the future, not just sound for dancing.