The three individuals most closely associated with the birth of Detroit techno as a genre are Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May, also known as ‘The Belleville Three.’ High school friends from Belleville, Michigan, the trio created electronic music tracks in their basement(s). Eventually, they were in demand at local dance clubs, thanks in part to seminal Detroit radio personality ‘The Electrifying Mojo.’
Ironically, Derrick May once described Detroit techno music as being a ‘complete mistake…like George Clinton and Kraftwerk caught in an elevator, with only a sequencer to keep them company.’ The location of Belleville was key to the formation of the three as musicians. Because the town was still ‘pretty racial at the time,’ according to Saunderson, ‘we three kind of gelled right away.’
The suburban setting also afforded a different environment in which to experience the music. ‘We perceived the music differently than you would if you encountered it in dance clubs. We’d sit back with the lights off and listen to records by Bootsy and Yellow Magic Orchestra. We never took it as just entertainment, we took it as a serious philosophy,’ recalls May. Belleville was located near several automobile factories, which provided well-paying jobs to a racially integrated workforce. ‘Everybody was equal,’ Atkins explained in an interview. ‘So what happened is that you’ve got this environment with kids that come up somewhat snobby, ‘cos hey, their parents are making money working at Ford or GM or Chrysler, been elevated to a foreman, maybe even a white-collar job.’ European acts like Kraftwerk were popular among middle-class black youth.
The segregation stigma attaching to Eight Mile Road was comparable to that dividing lines around Watts in Los Angeles, The Bronx in New York City, or Chicago’s South Side. Although the Belleville Three lived outside the city limits, their influence in loft apartment parties, after hours and high school clubs and late night radio united listeners of progressive dance music from above and below Eight Mile Road. Even Techno-friendly regular hours clubs like The Shelter, The Music Institute, and The Majestic were incubators Techno’s progress from basements and late night radio onto the dancefloors of the world. During the first wave of Detroit techno scene of the 80s, huge parties were held with upwards to fifty or more competing DJs. Most of the early party-goers were made up of middle-class black youths. However, as Detroit experienced heavy economic downfall, many of the middle-class white families fled to the suburbs in what is called the ‘white flight” of the early 70s, while middle-class black families were displaced by the degentrification of once securely middle-class black districts.
Detroit Techno as a genre created a new-found, integrated club scene in Detroit that had not been felt in a general sense after the Motown label moved to Los Angeles. Television programs like WGPR’s ‘The Scene’ featured a racially and ethnically very mixed selection of dancers every weekday after school, but the playlist was typically jammed with the R&B and Funk tracks of the day, like Prince or the Gap Band. Breakouts like Juan Atkins’s ‘Technicolor,’ under his Channel One moniker, eventually found their way onto ‘The Scene,’ and helped to validate the burgeoning local Techno underground with the urban high school set, college radio programmers and DJs from Chicago to London and beyond.
The Daily Omnivore 