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| Techno History |
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> Electronic Music History > Techno History |  |
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| ELECTRONIC MUSIC | |
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| > Late 19th cent. early 20th cent. > 1940s to 1950s > 1960s to late 1970s > Late 1970s to late 1980s > 1980s to early 2000s |
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| Techno was primarily developed in basement studios by "The Belleville Three", a cadre of African-American men who were attending college, at the time, near Detroit, Michigan. | |||||||||
| The budding musicians -- former high school friends and mixtape traders Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson -- found inspiration in Midnight Funk Association, an eclectic, 5-hour, late-night radio program hosted on WJLB-FM from 1977 through the mid-1980s by DJ Charles "The Electrifying Mojo" Johnson. Mojo's show featured heavy doses of electronic sounds from the likes of George Clinton, Kraftwerk, and Tangerine Dream, among others. | |||||||||
| > Post-rave
fusions > Growing commercial interest |
Though initially conceived as party music and played at Detroit all-ages clubs such as the Music Institute, techno began to be seen by many of its originators and up-and-coming producers as an expression of Future Shock and post-industrial angst. It also took on increasingly urban, science-fiction oriented themes. | ||||||||
| The music's producers were using the word "techno" in a general sense as early as 1984 (as in Cybotron's seminal classic "Techno City"), and sporadic references to an ill-defined "techno-pop" could be found in the music press in the mid-1980s. However, it was not until Neil Rushton assembled the compilation Techno! The New Dance Sound Of Detroit for Virgin UK in 1988 that the word came to formally describe a genre of music. | |||||||||
| > Styles
of ambient : music * Organic ambient music * Nature inspired ambient music * Isolationist ambient music * Ambient electronic music * Ambient dub * Ambient groove |
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| Techno has since been retroactively defined to encompass, among others, works dating back to "Shari Vari" (1981) by A Number Of Names, the earliest compositions by Cybotron (1981), Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder's "I Feel Love" (1977), and the more danceable selections from Kraftwerk's repertoire between 1978 and 1983. | |||||||||
| In the years immediately following the first techno compilation's release, techno was referenced in the dance music press as Detroit's relatively high-tech, mechanical brand of house music, because on the whole, it retained the same basic structure as the soulful, minimal, post-disco style that was emanating from Chicago, New York and London at the time. The music's producers, especially May and Saunderson, admit to having been fascinated by the Chicago club scene and being influenced by house in particular. This influence is especially evident in the tracks on the first compilation, as well as in many of the other compositions and remixes they released between 1988 and 1992. May's 1987-88 hit "Strings Of Life" (released under the nom de plume Rhythim Is Rhythim), for example, is considered a classic in both the house and techno genres. | |||||||||
| > History > Musicology |
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| HOUSE MUSIC | |||||||||
| > Late
1960s to early 1980s > Early 1980s-Late 1980s : Chicago years > Late 1980s-Early 1990s : British Connection > Social aspects of raves > Late 1980s to early 1990s : United States > Early 1990s to mid 1990s : " Summer Love" > Mid-1990s & beyond > The rise of the UK "superclub" |
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| A spate of techno-influenced releases by new producers in 1991-92 resulted in a rapid fragmentation and divergence of techno from the house genre. Many of these producers were based in the UK and the Netherlands, places where techno had gained a huge following and taken a crucial role in the development of the club and rave scenes. Many of these new tracks in the fledgling IDM, trance and hardcore/jungle genres took the music in more experimental and drug-influenced directions than techno's originators intended. Detroit and "pure" techno remained as a subgenre, however, championed by a new crop of Detroit-area producers like Carl Craig, Kenny Larkin, Richie Hawtin, Jeff Mills, Drexciya, Robert Hood, and others, plus certain musicians in the UK and Germany. | |||||||||
| May is often quoted as comparing techno to "George Clinton and Kraftwerk stuck in an elevator", even though very little, if any, techno ever bore a stylistic resemblance to Clinton's repertoire. | |||||||||
| For various reasons, techno is seen by the American mainstream, even among African-Americans, as "white" music, even though its originators and many of its producers are Black. The historical similarities between techno, jazz, and rock and roll, from a racial standpoint, are a point of contention among fans and musicians alike. Derrick May, in particular, has been outspoken in his criticism of the co-opting of the genre and of the misconceptions held by people of all races with regard to techno. In recent years, however, the publication of relatively accurate histories by authors Simon Reynolds (Generation Ecstasy aka Energy Flash) and Dan Sicko (Techno Rebels), plus mainstream press coverage of the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, have helped to diffuse the genre's more dubious mythology. The genre has further expanded as more recent pioneers of the scene such as Moby, Orbital, and the Future Sound of London have made the style break through to the mainstream pop culture. | |||||||||
| > History > Musicology |
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