I was curious about the Belleville Three (who have no relationship to the Triplets of Belleville) because I wasn't really aware of them.
the wikipedia article on the Belleville Three says the "first wave of Detroit techno" was some of the future members meeting and forming Cybotron, releasing Alleys of Your Mind in 1981 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMHNhJJnve4 to me this is quite clearly Kraftwerk inspired, and Kraftwerk had been going for about 10 years at that point.
1981 puts them after Devo had been around awhile, and Talking Heads and B-52s, which were more pop but featured many of these sounds, and contemporaneous with Depeche Mode, Eurythmics, and Yaz/Yazoo.
I'm not trying to assign/give/take credit, just saying here's what they sounded like and who else sounded similar to me. Zappa and P Funk are generally noted as having explored these sounds early on, but I don't enjoy their stuff so much so I don't listen to it much. This comment is a bit of "you might try listening to this" if you're interested.
I don't remember when we all started saying techno, it was definitely in full swing in the 90's, I think it was the 80's but gotta admit, I dunno.
Kraftwerk started being called "Techno-pop" around 1978 by a Japanese critic, and the term caught on in Europe. "Techno" alone was a term being thrown around in 1982, perhaps earlier, by German press (and even Billboard seems to have used it) to talk about electronic music in general, from Kraftwerk to New Order to Front-242.
However: those European acts that were called "Techno" in the early 80s are now retroactively called "Electro" or "Synth Pop".
Interestingly, the early-80s Bellevue Three music, by the way, is much closer to the "Electro" camp, as the popular tunes often lacks the four-to-the-floor associated with today's techno (which the article itself talks about), and feature a breakbeat instead (check out Afrikaa Bambaata for comparison).
The four-on-the-floor itself was already a feature on electronic club music like Trans Europe Express by Kraftwerk and I Feel Love by Donna Summer, both 1977. Italo Disco (early 80s) also mainly featured that drum beat.
The term "Detroit Techno" and the style itself, featuring the four-on-the-floor, only appeared in the late 1980s. Some people say 1987/1988.
And to make matters more complicated: by the time Detroit Techno was flourishing, there was already some music from the Frankfurt Tape Scene that was starting to sound like modern Techno (EDIT: some examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT_K28uMxNY). It wasn't something that happened overnight, in Europe it mostly evolved from Acid House (which also used the four-to-the-floor as a rule), while in Detroit it evolved from Electro.
To me, the confusion happens because of some disagreements about terminology. First, groups that Europeans called "Techno" are now being called "Synth Pop" or "Electro" because they sound different from modern dancefloor Techno, or because they made more diverse music (Bigod 20 and Nitzer Ebb are called EBM). Second, the misconception that early-80s Detroit music was "the real Techno", when in reality it wasn't exactly modern techno, it was closer to Kraftwerk and Afrika Bambaata.
In reality there was a lot of music being called Techno and a very rich heritage, but some people want to say theirs was "the real first", while in reality it's not that simple.
This post omits the substantial Japanese contributions to techno and I am not sure why.
Technopop was not just some journalist’s genre descriptor for Kraftwerk. It was a rich genre originated in Japan by Yellow Magic Orchestra, who combined Kraftwerk’s sound with a more pop sensibility.
Many of the Detroit techno originators have cited YMO alongside Kraftwerk as a key influence.
Two key contributions from YMO come to mind, but there are many others:
ps: Technopop would later evolve into what we know as city pop, and eventually present-day J-pop. The sound quickly diverged from what we would recognize as techno; the early releases in the genre are the most important for this discussion, especially YMOs since those were by far the most accessible in the US. It’s all interesting to listen to though!
What tunes are you wanting to highlight? Skimming that video and I recognise Frankie Knuckles, Farley "Jackmaster" Funk, Mike "Hitman" Wilson (all Chicago House) and The KLF (British erm... Rave?).
It's mostly a categorical problem - techno is a hard term to pin down. I've been thinking for the past few years that late 60s/early 70s prog-rock played a much more substantial role in it then I had initially assumed for the 20 years prior. Take say Tocatta from ELP's BSS album: https://youtu.be/Qk8jAuVzga8?t=494 ... that's 1973 - a careful ear will recognize many later standard patterns packed in that small clip. There's tons of these little 20-second or so clips that are 20 years ahead of their time in the prog-rock from the era.
Along with that are space age and lounge jazz. Take Hugo Montenegro – Moog Power from 1969 for instance or the Mort Garson album under the name Atraxia from 1975.
I used to think these weren't part of the story but I've been coming around on it and think of it as "technos" Xerox PARC era, the first attempt at the future world that electro and 80s disco took the lead on.
We separate rock from techno categorically but I think it's a limitation and mistake if we're trying to figure out the influences and history. That's a modern distinction. E2-E4 came out of that, to put things back in to West Germany - an album heavily cited as influence regardless which originating American school you want to focus on (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ys0HyevZpQg). Of course put that guy back in 1975 and you get more Xerox PARC style prog rock inventions, this time for electric guitar https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=khejrbgdc4w *
Let's call these things Techno v.0.1-0.8 or so.
This stuff is complicated. It's like how Wes Craven said the opening chords of the Gary Wright's pop song "Dream Weaver" was his inspiration for Freddy Krueger. (those first 30 seconds ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZKuzwPOefs) Things are weird.
> However: those European acts that were called "Techno" in the early 80s are now retroactively called "Electro" or "Synth Pop".
This has been my core insight, any one person you are talking to may well be correct given their location and time that they learned about these things.
To 2023 me, "Electro" doesn't have enough information to know for sure what music you mean, but in early 2000's in the Australian club scene, Electro was a specific sub-genere of modern club house. We would probably call it electro-house now that it's not the current zeitgeist.
The fact that I know for sure people will disagree with that is how I know the former insight is right, it's very dependent on time and place, and there is no authority.
I totally agree with you, but would also add that electro and techno kind of have the same meaning to me now. If someone ask about it I would reply back what their favourite guitar music is, because it's not a genre anymore but style how to make music. Namely electronic or technology focused
There was also an Electro revival in the 2000s that sounds nothing like the original, people called it electroclash but now I see a lot of people calling it just electro.
In the end, the differences are minimal, and the more trivial they are, the more people squabble about it. Add or remove a keyboard pad and you have a new genre which people will hate.
I always figure what makes house and techno different from earlier electronic music and contemporaneous synthpop is more contextual than musical. House and techno tended to be made by individuals, not by bands. It was put together by people who started with synthesizers, and then stopped with synthesizers. There was no attempt to even fake that there was some live drummer or live keyboard player as part of the "performance". In the case of house (perhaps less so with techno), the goal was to get your tracks played by DJs who were mixing them up with other tracks played at local nightclubs, it was not to end up on Top of the Pops. I think this difference in motivation matters, because it explains better how house and techno evolved into what they are today.
Of course, all genres are arbitrary and there continues to be lots of cross-pollination between electronic music that is mainstream/popular and the stuff people are just throwing together in their bedrooms for their mates online or for the local party scene.
Atkins’ contributions to techno go well beyond Cybotron.
When Atkins left the group, he started recording solo under the aliases Model 500 and (later) Infiniti. The early Model 500 releases like “No UFOs”, in addition to being absolute classics, demonstrate the progression from electro to what we would now call Detroit techno. He also collaborated with many of the Berlin techno pioneers in the 90s, forming a key link between the two cities.
Not to mention that Atkins mentored May, Saunderson, and many of the other techno originators.
(ps. Cybotron is not really techno, IMO. It is better categorized as electro with a few prog-rock and post-punk flourishes, a sort of proto-techno. But pointing this out makes you kind of a pedantic bore, so most are happy to go along with calling Cybotron techno.)
There are two Cybotrons. One is an Australian rock band from the 70s and the other is Juan Atkins and Richard Davis from Detroit.
While the latter had some rock influence as well, they predominantly did “Detroit electro” driven by drum machines like the 808, prime example being Clear.
Nope. I’m talking about the same Cybotron. Jon-5 was an early member and he was a guitar player. Eventually he quit since the direction changed. But there's still some guitars in some tracks in the Enter album. And Juan Atkins later left because Richard Davis wanted to focus on rock again.
Also see The History of Tape Looping[1], which starts in the 1940s, though you can definitely take the roots of electronic music back much further.
While only briefly mentioned in the above history, here's Steve Reich, in a piece he made in a 1966 piece called Come Out[2][3], which definitely has the seeds of repetitive electronic music like techno (it's pretty long, I recommend starting about 9'27" in if you don't want to listen to the whole thing).
Though it couldn't be mistaken for a full techno track, I would not be at all surprised to hear something like a portion of that in a lot of electronic music today, almost 60 years later. It sounds a lot more modern than Kraftwerk, anyway.
And here[4] is Delia Derbyshire's[5] Dr Who rendition from 1963... a fully realized electronic dance track, also long, long before Kraftwerk.
Just to further highlight how muddied the origin waters are, there absolutely was a connection to Depeche Mode. At one point, the band stopped by The Music Institute, one of the clubs considered a "birthplace" of Detroit Techno. Interestingly, Kai Alce (aside: highly recommend checking out his work if you're unfamiliar) from the quote below recently shared this New Yorker piece in support of Detroit being the origin of Techno.
>The Music Institute’s juice bar – in tandem with its membership scheme – helped the owners keep a “grip on the tone” of the club, according to Miller. Only Depeche Mode seemed to object to the no alcohol policy. John McCready, reporting on Detroit techno for The Face in 1989, escorted the band to the bar. “Then they got there and realized there was no liquor, and it was too late to get them any,” said Kai Alcé, who had been hired to work the coat check. “Waters all round,” was Martin Gore’s rueful response.
Nothing worse than when journalists try to turn the genesis of musical genres into a defined, definite thing and play the game of accusing some of "stealing" from others. It's absurd, and defies everything about art.
There's a serious rift in the world between those who view (Detroit) techno as "Kraftwerk, but a bit different" and "yes, inspired in part by Kraftwerk but actually its own genre". There's an important racial/cultural subtext to those two origin stories as well.
I've seen this argument play out on various blogs, podcasts and even a couple of college level courses over the past 10 years.
Massive amount of ignorance demonstrated here by blaming journalists. This has been a heavy debate within the dance music scene as far back as the earliest days of the Belleville Three. Nearly every fan/everyone involved in the scene has an opinion as to where the genesis was.
Zappa? Do you mean Zapp as in Zapp & Roger ? I've never heard anyone credit Frank Zappa with any exploratory forays into what became known as "techno".
Yeah, Zappa's name is dropped but he really had absolutely nothing to do with this. In the link you gave, it merely happened to be the case that Zappa was at a festival at which Amon Düül, Tangerine Dream and Guru Guru performed. That's a bit like pointing to some particular at Coachella or Glastonbury and finding that both Beyonce and Chvrches performed (i.e. the only connection is being in the same place).
Zappa's own explorations are amazing (watch parts of Live at the Roxy to get an idea of his ensemble at its best, and there's oodles of other incredible rock-infused-with-jazz-and-classical-understandings in his output), but they really have essentially nothing at all to do with the evolution of techno.
This is an interesting enough article, but it has been written dozens - if not hundreds - of times since the mid-90s. Everybody seriously into electronic music knows the impact of the Belleville Three. The history has already been written, drawing a line from disco, funk and early synth noodling of the 70s through the club scenes in NYC and Chicago, to the bedrooms of Detroit, and back over the Atlantic to London, Ibiza, Manchester and eventually Berlin.
There are perhaps people who have a legitimate case to be made that they have been left out of the history. I remember one DJ from Chicago (Leonard "Remix" Rroy) who wasn't part of the Warehouse clique and spent years telling everyone who listened that he did at least as much to pioneer house music in the city as Frankie Knuckles. But The Belleville Three and Underground Resistance are not that. I was hoping this article would reveal more untold stories like that one, not the same mythology that's already been around for almost three decades at this point.
This article is very strange. It's written under the pretense that these musicians aren't recognized for their contributions to the music that came after the German origins of techno when they absolutely are; you would struggle to find _anybody_ who listens to house music beyond top 40 radio hits disputing the contributions of black, female, queer, etc. artists. Many (me included) would argue that those demographics did most of the legwork developing modern EDM (that did/will have any commercial success, at least) and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
The people this article claimed were snubbed had this to say:
>According to Banks, Kraftwerk was in the audience that night at Tresor. He spotted the band members and rushed to tell Jeff Mills, who didn’t believe him until he saw Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in the back of the room. Banks said that it was like seeing living legends, the guys who provided the blueprints for their own souped-up sound. He said that Hütter and Schneider were just grateful to be recognized by the next generation of techno whiz kids. “We talked for a second in that narrow, dingy stairwell going to the surface,” Banks said, before switching to a comically bad German accent. “ ‘Thank you for remembering us,’ they said.”
Nonsense, that is clearly Acid House :) 2:30 onwards they have a liquid proto-TB-303-ish squelchy melody in there.
Thanks for this. Never heard it before and it's a great track that's very danceable unlike lots of other esoteric/experimental music that pursue atonal/arhythmic horrors. I love the garage-punk/skiffle rawness compared to electronic perfection.
The video is fantastic and it demonstrates how some people can be hesitant or uncertain when encountering true innovation. Only a small percentage of the audience, about 10-20%, seems to fully comprehend the concept, while the rest appear puzzled or confused.
you would struggle to find _anybody_ who listens to house music beyond top 40 radio hits...
This isn't an trade rag, it's the New Yorker & The New Yorker has a broad reader base. I don't think it's a stretch to say most readers aren't listening to house music beyond top 40 radio hits.
Most people that aren't listening past top 40 hits barely remember Kraftwerk, if they even know who they are at all.
Of the people reading this that actually care, they already know how influential Germany and the Midwest US were at their respective times.
After putting it in writing, my initial impression of the article as just "strange" may have been too mild. It seems a hell of a lot like it's meant to inflame culture war bullshit among uninvolved parties more than anything else.
I always get confused with these things of "who did it first"?
The cats from Detroit were certainly influenced by Kraftwerk. People from Detroit always accuse white Europeans of cultural appropriation.
But you don't see them pointing fingers at themselves when they go to countries where the dollar is worth a lot of money, buy all the local records and take them home to sample and make hip-hop or house music and with that make a lot of money.
For example, an underground house music duo called "Detroit Swindle" changed their stage name under pressure from Detroit artists.
A famous German DJ, who used the name "Motor City Drum Ensemble," also felt pressured and no longer uses that name, but he had an "odd" argument: he's from Stuttgart, also known as a "Motor City"
But people from Detroit didn't buy that argument. Anyway, all of this is egoistic and elitist nonsense from either side you look at it. If you look closely, couldn't the inventor of drum machines claim to be the inventor of techno, then? What about the inventor of TB303?
Looped music came from Robert Fripp which came from Steven Reich which came from Daphne Orem which came from Edwin Votey which came from ... But if you think about it, who was the first to serve the new music to a large audience and have it documented and then commoditize it is where i think the notion of "first" really comes from. It's like trying define the exact day that Boomers became Gen-X in the US: broad strokes make sense, but resolution is only so fine.
Oh, right, I had remembered it backwards, and I didn't realize Eno got it from Riley and Oliveros! I guess my chain of provenance is missing a few. Of course, in the hands of any creative musician, I think it would only take a week or so before they thought about making a tape loop on a reel-to-reel recorder.
"In September of 1972, the pair met in Eno’s London home studio, where he had set up a tape system developed by avant-garde composers Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros."
I dislike the linearity of your lineage. Misses out the kind of obvious ones like e.g. The Beatles looping tapes and building on Musique Concrète.
> Of course, in the hands of any creative musician, I think it would only take a week
Pretty much! Musique Concrète basically starts with the invention of magnetic tape. Electronic music itself basically starts with the vacuum tube.
Humans just really like making new sounds and music. If we invent any new tech that makes an odd noise, there will be a bunch of stoned grad students jamming with it later that day.
I like the New Yorker. I love the works of Juan Atkins and Derrick May.
"The situation escalated when Peter Feldmann, then the mayor of Frankfurt, sent an invitation for momem’s opening party welcoming guests “in the middle of Frankfurt, where techno has its origin.” The accumulated snubs set off a conflagration in the fiercely protective techno community".
This is silly. Of course the mayor of Frankfurt is gonna promote his shiny new museum, and probably doesn't know a ton about the Detroit scene.
That's not a reason to frame this as whitewashed, or blame the German effort to highlight their works.
What we need is more US support for the electronic music community. Like the article states, non profits like that German museum are not as much of a thing here.
It should be, and I can think of other people than the mayor of Frankfurt to direct your angry DMs to, to make things better.
A typical New Yorker attempt at maximizing controversy by framing a German city celebrating it's own techno pioneers as "stealing credit" for techno from Detroit.
As a guy who got into electronic music in the mid 90s and has seen the likes of Derrick May/Juan Atkins/Richie Hawtin live on multiple occasions, I really hate this attempt to try to turn every music genre into another "Elvis stole it" narrative. One of the most amazing things about the US techno/rave scene was how incredibly racially inclusive it always was, primarily because it was so dominated by gay Americans of all races who found that they faced aggressive bigotry from all skin colors. Hell, the Detroit techno scene really kicked off in the clubs that catered to Detroit's black middle class in the burbs, because the inner city Detroit black clubs were filled with aggressively, violently homophobic dudes looking for an excuse to beat people up.
I have fond memories of the absolute color-blindness of clubs in DC (Buzz/Nation) and Baltimore and yes, Detroit too. Nobody who lived through this scene would think that the Frankfurt museum is coming at the expense of the Belleville crew, ever.
Journalists love making things about racism. It's an immediate click magnet, but it's just gross to see something that was so beautiful cast in an inaccurate light by some journalist who was indoctrinated into a race obsessed, univariate model of human social interactions by a university professor.
I'm just as immersed in the scene, and I'm struggling to understand the blame towards journalists here. There has been a ton of hatred from OG cats in Detroit since this museum was announced, including accusations of racism. This isn't the New Yorker pulling accusations of racism out of their ass, it's reporting on something that folks in the scene, the very people profiled in the article, have - rightly or wrongly - actually been saying.
This is a common thread that folk in their shoes have been feeling for decades, and they've never really been silent about it.
Fun fact: Peter Feldmann has been ousted and voted out quite recently because he's a massive dickhead who tried to take ownership of everything. Even football championships. But he was forced to leave due to corruption!
One wonders if they’d instead built the museum in Stuttgart at the site of the old Kling Klang studio if the New Yorker would still try to frame this as “whitewashing”.
Great book about the rise of the Berlin techno scene called Der Klang Der Familie. In my read of that, the techno of Berlin and Detroit arose organically, simultaneously, and they sort of found each other serendipitously, and were connected through clubs like Tresor and labels like Interfisch. The world wasn't as connected in the late 80's early 90's as it is today, and particularly for the sorts of people that were squatting in abandoned structures in East Berlin.
I mean yeah Detroit's scene is significant in a historical context, but if we're talking electronic music, Kraftwerk is definitely up there as pioneers.
I think it's mostly semantics, it seems pretty axiomatic to me that Detroit Techno is from Detroit... but people like to have a simple label to slap on all EDM, and tend to reach for 'techno' which is vague at best.
> people ... tend to reach for 'techno' which is vague at best
Exactly this.
Journalism is such a joke these days - their agenda of sowing discord is blatant. Those familiar with the history of techno wouldn't call it a battle at all. It was about P.L.U.R. It wasn't pretentious and divisive like this generation.
>Those familiar with the history of techno wouldn't call it a battle at all. It was about P.L.U.R. It wasn't pretentious and divisive like this generation.
I feel like a broken record in this thread so maybe I should just move on, but comments like these genuinely confuse me. This has been a debate within the scene going back decades, and has always been a point of contention for many of the people who were in the Detroit scene during it's inception. They've always claimed it as theirs and have often taken umbrage or scoffed when people have claimed it's European in origin.
It was about unity, yes, but as the scene grew in the late 80's/early 90's, so did the battle over it's origins.
Making any claim about its inception is misguided, because it is not a single thing. One could argue that Robert Moog and Don Buchla invented techno in the 60s. It probably goes back further. It’s all standing on the shoulders of giants.
I don't disagree, and I've even mentioned elsewhere in this thread that it's really hard to pin down origins - a lot of takes about who did it first boil down to personal opinions. The waters are muddied and there will never be a clear picture.
I was just saying that I'm surprised that people in this thread are blaming contemporary journalists or, to borrow your phrase, "this generation" for this discussion, when in point of fact the Belleville Three have been having this "pretentious and divisive discussion" since at least the early 90's and they were born in the early 60's.
The fault of journalists here is turning up the heat and spinning this in terms of identity politics as usual, when that controversy only exists between a small number of people. If they cared about truth more than controversy they would see this. But airing grievances is popular these days.
Let’s not put on the rose colored spectacles. Many rave promoters were canny business operators who rode the wave of PLUR to fame and fortune. (Richie Hawtin, Paul Oakenfold, etc.)
Like the 60s festival promoters before them, they may have sold peace and love, but they were really in it for themselves.
There was also a lot of drug abuse and sexual assault, and the criminal activity that comes along with the drug trade. Not everyone had a good time.
Funny how all the "Black and queer" artist who felt overlooked at the opening of the Berlin Techno Museum in Berlin, Germany, didn't have much to say when "Exhibit 3000" the Detroit Techno Museum in Detroit, USA overlooked German artists completely.
Arguing over who was first leads where? No question what was happening in the midwest US (different scenes in Chi and Detroit) was a lot different from Germany. Once US DJ's started going over there (by invitation before long), that was important. But also question, what was going on in the Zodiak Free Arts Lab (10 years earlier) was also differently big (more artsy for one).
What Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music[0] has to say on Electro:
> There are whole libraries full of books about how white music culture is just a safe and boring pastiche of black music culture. From Jazz to Blues to Rock n Roll to Funk and to a lesser extent even Hip Hop, white America's greatest musical innovations have all been sheepishly stolen from the black man, often without any credit or compensation.
> Rarely is it mentioned that cultural appropriation works both ways, that on a select few occasions the black man has also stolen -- and expanded upon -- the innovations of square-ass stuffy-headed white dorks. Electro is one of those genres. And those square-ass stuffy-headed white dorks were Kraftwerk.
(he also asks important questions like "If Bambaataa is the focal point for the immortalization of Kraftwerk and the existence of Electro, would we be having this discussion if he sampled YMO instead?")
and on Techno:
> Affluent middle class black youth living in the peaceful Detroit suburb of Belleville Michigan in the late 70s, raised by the scions of the automative industry. They had money to spend and parties to attend but rather than identify with the harsh street sounds of Rap coming out of New York, they looked instead toward mainland Europe to emulate the latest trends in fashion and music. [...]
> Detroit Techno was never more than a regional genre and it never blew up like House, Garage or Rap. That is, until 1988 when this generic mean-nothing uneventful compilation [Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit] made it overseas [...] If they called it Poopyfart, today we would all be waxing nostalgic about the oldskool Detroit Poopyfart sound of the Belleville Trio.
> The Detroit Techno dudes who grew up idolizing European synthesizer music were now idolized in Europe. This spawned a number of Techno subgenres across the ocean, all of them interesting for various reasons that have nothing to do with Detroit. [...] But it was the word 'Techno' that blew up and not the actual sound, and for this reason Detroit felt somewhat ashamed to associate their city with marked-up prancing goofball euroshite [...]
> With time comes restitution. Detroit took the word back with a big-ass music festival, an exhibit in the Detroit Historical Museum (right beside the Motown exhibit) [...] Things have come full circle. Techno is once again the embodiment of Detroit.
FYI: Ishkur’s guide was a great resource in the 90s when it went well beyond anything else available on the internet at the time, but it shouldn’t be taken as anything approaching canonical. It’s not clear what his qualifications are to pontificate aside from that he was around in Detroit when some of this was going on, and he was the first to make a website about it.
This issue seems to stem from the misuses of the term 'techno'. My understanding is that Detroit was house music. I feel like they're using the term 'techno' as an all encompassing term for electronic music. Detroit House and German Techno sound nothing alike and have different influences (and some shared influences if you go back far enough). They both stemmed from Disco in the likes of Summer's etc, but diverged in very different directions, House retaining more of the Disco musical elements, Techno retaining more of the synthesised and electronica sounds.
I could be totally wrong here, but Techno is more than just loops 4x4 beats, and so is House, so it's kind of apples and oranges. I'd associated Techno with Germany and House with America, I'm not sure there's a valid dispute here?
I pretty much agree with you, but I do think the ostensible conflict has been important for culture-keeping purposes in various scenes.
The particular character of music genres shifts over time because the primary function of genres is not consistency but rather a superficial purity that temporarily preserves the scenes in which culture is incubated.
That's a good point, I realised as I was writing my original comment that I'm probably using very recent definitions of those terms. Historically, 'techno' probably was a more all encompassing term, so it's easy for me to discount all of the historical disagreements based on the current definitions. So, I'm sort of over-simplifying it just by using todays definitions
I kinda want to stir the pot on this when it comes to Jungle and Drum and Bass.
I feel like rarely see anyone claiming its roots in Miami Bass, but it seems obvious to me, e.g. tracks like "I wanna rock" by Luke and more to the point, this original version of "Wiggle wiggle?"
This is 1992? I believe by the time of this tune, the double-speed Amen Break was already popular thanks to late Acid House and Breakbeat Hardcore. Even Prodigy had a tune with this beat around then (Charly I think). This is THE sound of 1992, even rock bands had this going on instead of normal drums...
Interestingly, the "Bass" of Drum n' Bass, more specificaly the "Reese Bass" sound, was invented by Kevin Saunderson of the Belleville Three. In early DnB, this is as iconic as the drums. In late-90s DnB this was even more prominent than the Amen Break, IMO.
I think more dancehall reggae, specifically late 80s/early 90s "digital dancehall". Try checking the basslines on stuff like supa cat's album "don dada" [1] and tell me it's not pretty similar to early jungle you hear in artists from the jamaican diaspora such as dillinja [2]. Jungle came out of what was called hardcore in the early 90s and both of those genres are having quite a fun revival lately. People are going to the lengths of busting out old amigas to make this on and play live even.
Oh there's a really good BBC documentary about this, I remember me and some friends watched it years ago and we were laughing about how they made dillinja dress like a total dork ass for the telly, at that point he was still living with his parents apparently haha. Cool shots of his DAW setup with an Atari ST running what looks like early cubase [3]
I agree with the sibling commenters, it's definitely more dancehall. Listen to the 1991 album Reggae Owes Me Money [1] by Ragga Twins, produced by UK breakbeat hardcore pioneers Shut Up and Dance [2]. The album bounces between proto-jungle and dancehall quite a bit.
I have to laugh yet kind of admire such a silly suggestion :)
A commonly first claimed Jungle track is Lennie De Ice, We Are I.E. recorded 89 released 91. Sampling the Amen Break was common in breakbeat / rave but it became Jungle when it got that dub bassline.
Side note: And seemingly relevant in the context of startups...
The Rolland drum machines as designed / intended were a failure. It wasn't until they were "repurposed" making "dance music" did they find a nichec/ market. But those machines were not originally intended to make "dance music".
Of the many separate lines that ultimately led to Techno (arguably, Detroit Techno), one of them is absolutely Motown. The thread pretty solidly moves from Motown towards House, which came from Chicago. Chicago had a lot of people with strong connections to Detroit, and there's a good number of people who moved from House over to (Detroit) Techno when it was in it's infancy.
Chez Damier would be one of them. He cut his chops in Chicago with House music before moving to Detroit and being one of the founders of The Music Institute, one of the first Detroit Techno clubs (and mentioned in the New Yorker piece).
Aside: He's also one of the humblest people in the scene, and still one of the best DJs I've seen. Caught him a few weeks back and I cut a serious rug for 3+ hours. 24 hours later you could still ring sweat out of my shirt.
Edit: I'd argue that (and as this whole thread demonstrates, a lot of history around this can't really be pinned down, so a lot of it is just personal opinion) you wouldn't have House and Techno if you didn't have Motown, followed by Disco.
Hmm, I'm not convinced. I think it's a bit of wishful thinking to connect Motown just because of the geography. I'm not seeing much specific connection between the artists, performers, labels etc. I don't think you listen to Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes etc. and say to yourself "This is the direct parent of Techno!".
The label itself had moved to LA in the 60s. I think the Motown style had passed on by then to Disco which had also passed into High NRG / Italdisco when House/Techno started rising. The early House singers were coming from Church/Gospel like they did for Motown so in some ways they are also siblings with a shared parent.
That isn't to say that those Motown artists weren't influential at all, quite the opposite. I love how the great musicians in multiple genres, Rock/Pop/EDM, are in total awe of them. They have global influence. I just haven't seen a unique connection for Detroit/Chicago because of the geography.
One connection might be session musicians from Motown playing on house tracks. I believe Mad Mike Banks was a keyboard player and the whole Underground Resistance ethos came from his disillusionment with the music industry.
This kind of highlights what I mentioned about how the history of the transformation of this music is hard to pin down and strongly subjected to personal opinion. :)
>I don't think you listen to Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes etc. and say to yourself "This is the direct parent of Techno!".
Yes and no, IMO. I certainly wouldn't say that you can hear much that would prompt you to call it "the direct parent of Techno". But there's plenty of it that you can hear within House and Disco, also IMO. There's a direct line of influence, as you say, that I can hear; Motown -> Disco -> House -> Techno.
>I just haven't seen a unique connection for Detroit/Chicago because of the geography.
I struggle to see how anyone can't see it. It's not like everyone involved with Motown uprooted themselves and moved to Los Angeles in the 60's. Many people stayed in Detroit and continued to make that kind of music in Detroit. It's in the city's blood, in their musical DNA. It's close to their heart and they absolutely take a strong influence from it. Not just in dance music, Detroit's own J Dilla was heavily influenced by it and he didn't start producing anything until the early 90's (someone correct me if I'm wrong on the timing there), after Techno had been around for a bit and well after Motown had left the city.
Hell, the Belleville Three were born and raised in Detroit in the early 60's; it would've been impossible to have lived there and not been surrounded by Motown. Plenty of other artists who were doing things in the 80's also would've grown up around a lot of the Motown sound, and have always been vocal about it's influence in what they do. Motown didn't bail on Detroit until 1972[1], giving the aforementioned trio at least a decade of living right next door to the label.
But the geography point I was specifically making, and maybe I wasn't clear about, was more tied to Motown's influence in House music. There's a much more "obvious" connection between the two when you listen to the two genres than there is between Motown and Techno, as you've said. But I truly don't think that there'd be (Detroit) Techno without House (and House as we know it without Motown). The two cities are geographically close to one another (a mere ~4-hour drive) and intrinsically linked. Plenty of the originators of each sound would go back and forth between the two cities to immerse themselves in the scenes and the sounds. You can dive back into interviews with these artists and find them sharing stories of what it was like traveling from one city to the next and immersing themselves in the sound. There was plenty in the way of House that influenced and led to Detroit Techno.
That's why I tried to pick an example of a House artist, Chez, moving from Chicago and ending up being heavily involved with pushing Detroit Techno forward; co-founding The Music Institute and giving the sound a home, and helped run Kevin Saunderson's KMS label.
Can’t find the quote at the moment, but I believe one of the Belleville Three - either Atkins or May - claimed that techno was a rejection of Motown. So it was clearly on their minds, at least, even if they would have denied its influence at the time.
I might know of what you're referring to, but I had thought it was more along the lines of rejecting Motown's formula for hits. I could totally be wrong though.
I think the BBC documentary "Dancing in the street" covered some of this in the last two episodes. As always, history is written by the victors but the origins of "Planet Rock" are covered there.
Techno was started in Detroit by black people and there's a great amount of evidence for this [1]
House the same I believe in Chicago, love that acid. Note the audience is mostly black [2]
These people are having way more fun than any of us will ever hope to
I think what needs to be pointed out more than anything is that back in these times the scene around electronic music was a radical racial integrator. You had skinheads, rastas, and football hooligan ultras all partying with each other instead of fighting. I mean I think we all know how that worked (It involved a certain lubricant) but I still think that people are missing the point with this shit these days so hard
> I think what needs to be pointed out more than anything is that back in these times the scene around electronic music was a radical racial integrator. You had skinheads, rastas, and football hooligan ultras all partying with each other instead of fighting.
If techno was started in detroit, then in terms of origin stories, the above quote is completely disconnected. Yes, you had skinheads, rastas and football hooligan ultras all partying with each other, but that in the England, in the 90s, mostly after ecstasy arrived.
By all accounts ecstasy was reasonably widespread in the UK club scene by 1982 when Soft Cell's Non Stop Ecstatic Dancing was released. And the UK "summer of love" was 1987, Shoom opened in 1987, etc. You're not wrong that connecting the origin of techno to the UK club and rave scene diminishes the importance of Detroit, but the rave scene was well and truly massive before the 90s.
> Although primarily referring to the summer of 1988 it lasted into the summer of 1989, when electronic dance music and the prevalence of the drug MDMA fuelled an explosion in youth culture culminating in mass free parties and the era of the rave.
I was at clubs in London (both as a punter and as DJ) in 1980-83, and ecstasy, if a thing at all, was not widely available or used. Its use ballooned later than that.
And it was 1994 before the UK government attempted to ban raves by banning a certain kind of music. I left the UK in 1989, and felt very disconnected from the rave scene that was happening at that time, but it is definitely my impression that it did not blow up into a truly massive scale till after 1990, though it was certainly alive and well at the end of the 80s.
If it involves freeform rhythmic dancing based on drums, black people probably invented it. It's a simple heuristic that hasn't steered me wrong yet. Any claim of non-rhythmic people that cant dance inventing a genre of dance music should immediately raise suspicion.
> If it involves freeform rhythmic dancing based on drums, black people probably invented it.
This is racist and harmful rhetoric. There exist a plethora of cultures and music has been independently developed and is core to them all as their humanity. Please do honest research before making racially motivated statements.
It's not racist or harmful to state the historical fact that sub-tropical people have a long and strong relationship with drums that is unrivaled elsewhere on the planet.
Populations that exhibit no natural ability to move to drum based music could not invent drum based dance music genres except through derivation in which case its not invention, just mimicry.
the wikipedia article on the Belleville Three says the "first wave of Detroit techno" was some of the future members meeting and forming Cybotron, releasing Alleys of Your Mind in 1981 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMHNhJJnve4 to me this is quite clearly Kraftwerk inspired, and Kraftwerk had been going for about 10 years at that point.
1981 puts them after Devo had been around awhile, and Talking Heads and B-52s, which were more pop but featured many of these sounds, and contemporaneous with Depeche Mode, Eurythmics, and Yaz/Yazoo.
Two years later Cybotron released Clear which is Kraftwerk blended with more of a funk sound https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3QHj7lai9I
I'm not trying to assign/give/take credit, just saying here's what they sounded like and who else sounded similar to me. Zappa and P Funk are generally noted as having explored these sounds early on, but I don't enjoy their stuff so much so I don't listen to it much. This comment is a bit of "you might try listening to this" if you're interested.
I don't remember when we all started saying techno, it was definitely in full swing in the 90's, I think it was the 80's but gotta admit, I dunno.