A deep dive into the roots of Detroit techno

Little attention has been given to the music created in Detroit throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s — between the Motown era and the rise of techno. Ashley Zlatopolsky traces the origins of Detroit techno in a longform feature for Red Bull Music Academy Magazine and celebrates the city’s disco and post-disco scenes that gave birth to the techno movement.

“Memories of teenagers throwing thousand-strong disco parties; rampant after hours clubs, with authorities turning a blind-eye under the rule of Mayor Coleman Young; a short-lived New Wave boom that brought the likes of The B-52’s to party in Detroit – all of it has basically been forgotten in the techno surge that followed.”

Zlatopolsky interviews many of the producers, musicians, and DJs responsible for creating the culture in which Detroit techno would thrive.

Read more in Red Bull Music Academy Magazine.