The Origins of Techno
April 30, 2011The word techno is well known these days, and the music that it alludes to has been around long enough for people to kind of take it for granted. It’s basically the root of modern dance music, and it came into being only a couple of decades ago. So where exactly did it comes from and how did it achieve notoriety so quickly? Well, here is a little history of just that.
Like most music revolutions, the roots of techno come from a tiny group of people in Detroit. Specifically the Belleville three – Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May – and their other friend Eddie Fowlkes. These school friends of Belleville high school were all aspiring DJs and experimenters with the keyboard equipment available back in the 1980s. By the end of the 80s they’d recorded and released their first albums, and were becoming known under various crazy pseudonyms.
They were lucky to grow up where they did. Detroit is one of those places where significant things happen in music, again and again. Jazz bloomed here, and beyond that Motown and Disco had come into being in it clubs. As a result, techno found an audience that were willing to hear new things, and clubs that weren’t afraid of innovation. This new sound, that really emphasised the slightly geeky chic of technology, really hit it off with a new generation of people that wanted to party.
The trend quickly caught on in Europe, and when some artists became disillusioned with what they saw as the normalisation of techno in Detroit they took part in a mass exodus to Europe. In England there was the creation of Acid house and other hardcore varieties, and when that scene died out the Germans greeted techno enthusiasts with open arms into the Berlin dance scene.
The last development that took place with techno was the revolution against corporate control of the genre. As soon as there were profits to be made the big record labels moved in, and many people saw that as a stifling of creative talent and rebelliousness. So in Detroit a group of artists have formed intelligent techno, which is becoming the heart of the techno scene across the world once more.
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