HOUSE MUSIC FROM DETROIT
For the woman from Detroit there is only one thing that matters: music. BLURP is having lunch when i arrive in one of east Detroit’s studios. Prior to our conversation ,she’d been playing with the roland 303 for hours. Happy as can be ,according to the studio manager.“for me it’s about the essence of the sound , not the talk around it”,she says as she sits down opposite me. «For example, i’m not concerned with whether something’s mainstream or not. My only standard is quality. I care about if i feel the music or not ,that snobbish attitude of ‘is something commercial, mainstream, underground, doesn’t matter to me. In my view ,those limits don’t exist. It’s all about the groove, the flow, the feeling ,i listen to everything , pop ,rock ,doesn’t matter. Genre boundaries are fictitious and optional”.The tone is set.
A girl from Detroit When she first came into contact with dance, she was still in high school. Every week she listened to a radio show from a transmitter in Detroit.The first thing she heard was acid, from Armando. She was instantly hooked; that hypnotic sound, fantastic. Detroit, where BLURP lived, had some nice clubs, but she was too young to go. She fantasized about it. In her mind, it became a kind of mythical place. Because she was a teenager, the myth grew bigger. When she was finally old enough to go, her parents came with her. They stood outside for a couple of hours waiting for her, because Detroit was a nice city: “But it’s still a bit ghetto.”
An insatiable appetite BLURP wanted to feel connected to the music. It became a passion, but her way of talking about it betrays an obsession. She completely immersed herself in music, wrote about it, started collecting records, became a promoter and eventually a DJ. “When I was a promoter in Detroit, where I lived because of my studies, Kyoto Jazz Massive stopped by. They wanted to visit the 500 meter tall Ostankino tower, which was closed, so we went to a record store. A huge store with four rooms full of obscure jazz, Soviet rock and exotica. Okino, one half of the group pushed a record into my hands: “You’ll love this! It’s a holy grail for every house DJ.” It was one of George Duke’s albums. My first adhesive vinyl, it was something magical. A chemical reaction.” A collecting rage followed. An insatiable appetite for more and better. The more she bought, the more she wanted to discover.
This i acce gigs
I have no home The only place she really seems to call home is the stage. When she gets into the flow, she forgets everything around her. It’s the only place where she doesn’t have to hide behind a mask. She loves the intensity of this lifestyle, but the search for the trance is exhausting. And moreover, lonely. «People don’t realize what it’s like to live this life.” She starts talking more softly. “How hard I have to work. I’m in a plane five, six times a week. I play so often that usually I’m not even recovered from the previous gig. But you still have to manage to give it your all.” Blurp has a Charlie Parker-like approach that causes her to experience and feel everything as intensely as possible.
g fe lon is a li all of my ess tofree s, for
“Parker sometimes hurt himself while he was performing. He did this to make the performance as human as possible.I find his approach very interesting. When I play, I put my monitor on the highest volume. I know my ears are fucked. I have tinnitus, a constant ringing. They get more and more fucked up every party.” She mimics an annoying voice. “Earplugs in, volume nice and soft.
THE CITY OF DETROIT HAS GONE THROUGH A MAJOR ECONOMIC AND DEMOGRAPHIC DECLINE IN RECENT DECADES. THE POPULATION OF THE CITY HAS FALLEN FROM A HIGH OF 1,850,000 IN1950 TO 701,000 IN 2013. THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY IN DETROIT HAS SUFFERED FROM GLOBAL COMPETITION AND HAS MOVED MUCH OF THE REMA INING PRODUCTION OUT OF DETROIT. SOME OF THE HIGHEST CRIME RATES.
THE DEMOLITION OF BUILDINGS AND THE SUBSEQUENT PHYSICAL BARRIERS CAUSED BY THE FREEWAYS SPLIT AND REDUCED THE THRIVING NEIGHBORHOODS. THE DE STRUCTION OF THESE BORHOODS WITH LITTLE NEIGH WARN ING OR EFFORT ON THE PART OF THE CITY TO PROVIDE HOUSING ASSISTANCE WAS CATASTROPHIC FOR THE AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN DETROIT. FAMILIES RECEIVED ONLY A THIRTY-DAY TO VACATE AND THE COMMI SSION MADE NO EFFORTS TO ASSIST FAMILIES IN RELOCATION.
Police con tions evolv one of the and most d tive riots in
nfrontaved into e deadliest destrucn United
Detroit Techno Music To say that Detroit techno was created as a reflection of the auto-industry as it was growing is false. The auto industry in Detroit had actually been shrinking at this time. The truth is, Techno was born in Detroit, but it had little to do with the auto industry and more to do with a diverse network of artists working in after hours night clubs. Many early techno tracks had futuristic or robotic themes, although a notable exception to this trend was a single by Derrick May under his pseudonym Rhythim Is Rhythim, called «Strings of Life» (1987). This vibrant dancefloor anthem was filled with rich synthetic string arrangements and took the underground music scene by storm in May 1987. It «hit Britain in an especially big way during the country’s 1987-1988 house explosion.» It became May’s best known track, which, according to Frankie Knuckles, «just exploded. It was like something you can’t imagine, the kind of power and energy people got off that record when it was first heard. «With subtle differences between the genres, clubs in both cities included Detroit techno and Chicago house tracks in their playlists without objection from patrons (or much notice by non-audiophiles).
The Belleville Three 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».The three, who were high school friends from Belleville, Michigan, created electronic music tracks in their basement(s). Eventually, they were in demand at local dance clubs, thanks in part to 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 Belleville Three as musicians. Because the town was still “pretty racially prejudiced at the time,” according to Saunderson, “we three kind of gelled right away.” The suburban setting also afforded a different setting 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. 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.”
Detroit is «Motor City» Detroit Techno was obviously formed in Detroit; however, if its name weren’t “Detroit Techno” how many people would have been able to guess that fact? When listening to Detroit Techno there are a lot of machinery sounds, which represents the sounds musicians would hear in their everyday life at the auto yard. Detroit is «Motor City», so hearing motor-y sounds in Detroit Techno should be no surprise. Detroit Techno also sounds similar to Chicago House; however, Chicago House does not have as many motor-y/machinery sounds in it the way Detroit Techno does.
Detroit Techno eventually became popular for clubbing; however, before it was simply a way everyday Detroit citizens would not only use to express their lives but it was, in a sense, a shared struggle that we would hear in Detroit Techno. Detroit Techno ended up becoming a way for middle class Blacks to distance themselves from lower class blacks.
Success abroad In 1988, due to the immense popularity of American electronic music in Great Britain, dance music entrepreneur Neil Rushton approached the Belleville Three to license their work for release in the UK. To define the Detroit sound as being distinct from Chicago house, Rushton and the Belleville Three chose the word «techno» for their tracks, a term that Atkins had been using since his Cybotron days .