I grew up in Detroit, in the city, and in the early-to-mid 1980s, as teenagers, my friends were spinning records in their basement - which then was almost unheard of, far out on the bleeding edge. I was too unadventurous as a teenager to engage - an old story about how people deal with something new and disruptive: it wasn't music by my rigid definition (I listened to the Beatles, Stones, Zepplin), it was just copying (samples) and buttons (sequencers and drum machines); it was change, it challenged the status quo, and it made me uncomfortable. I grew up to love music, including electronic music, and anything that challenges and expands my mind, but I missed my best opportunity. If I knew then - about change - what I know now.

My friends were into the techno scene at its birth, going to the Music Institute[0] later - an after hours club where the top DJs would spin. One went on to become a successful, wealthy DJ. I only understood it in hindsight, at the first DEMF ...

Here's the history I know, and searching the article for keywords I see much isn't mentioned. There was an incredible overnight DJ at the time, the Electrifying Mojo,[1] who would play anything - A rare Prince cut, followed by AC/DC, followed by Kraftwerk; he also mixed in motivational sermons and love for his young audience (if you're feeling you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot; hold on ...). The story is that the Bellville Three[2] heard Kraftwerk on Mojo and were inspired to create their own music of Detroit - the mechanical rhythm of the factory, "George Clinton and Kraftwerk caught in an elevator, with only a sequencer to keep them company". Mojo later played their music for the city to hear.

Techno was seen by many insiders, at least, as music of young African-Americans. The Bellville Three, the inventors, were African-American, and I believe most of the Detroit scene was black people too. It was a creative, progressive music, unlike the hate and destructiveness of hip-hop. Hip-hop was scene as playing to someone else's role to sell records, the stereotype that society envisioned and found familiar, of violent, angry, ignorant, misogynist young black males out of the central casting of white imagination. It was a great tragedy that society bought the latter - what they expected and maybe wanted - and not the former at the record stores, on MTV, and in their vision of a generation of young people with a certain skin color.

Detroit itself, seen as a cultural backwater, is where one truly revolutionary music after another was invented. Not subtle shifts, but whole new visions: Motown (boring to me, but it was a revolution and it produced Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, and more), punk (rarely credited to Detroit, but the MC5 and the Iggy Pop / The Stooges were first), Funkadelic (George Clinton), techno, and maybe more since. Techno in Detroit didn't stop in the 1980s; several generations continued to create inventive, beautiful, sophisticated electronic music. Look up Carl Craig if you want a starting point.

And despite what you hear, Detroit, in the city, was a great place to grow up. And I was white. Friendly, neighborly, I saw one crime (a kid stealing a bike) and zero race problems in decades. Every time you hear a horror story about Detroit the city, ask where the speaker is from - IME, they are always from the suburbs. People from the suburbs so rarely crossed the city line that parents sometimes wouldn't let playmates visit us. Once I arranged to meet a suburban friend downtown and used the Renaissance Center as a landmark - the equivalent of the Empire State Building or Sears Tower in their cities, but relatively larger in a small downtown - my friend didn't know what it was. The suburbs were a different story, cultureless, featureless, paranoid, monochromatic.

...

When the first Detroit Electronic Music Festival (DEMF) was launched Memorial Day weekend in 2000, the city and I were amazed: A million people came from all over the world, and all were telling us our city was a Mecca for this music. The overwhelming majority had no idea it existed, much less Detroit's place in it. The great DJs and composers were famous around the world, but anonymous in their hometown. In movie script-like moments, they took the stage one after another to the recognition they deserved. Derrick May finally came on stage for the headline slot, and in front of the massive crowd in Hart Plaza in his hometown, started his set with James Brown's The Payback. Thank you Derrick, Juan, and Kevin!

[0] http://music.hyperreal.org/lists/313/08.html

[1] http://music.hyperreal.org/lists/313/09.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_techno#The_Belleville_...