Overview
As the term “disco” lost favor in the late 1970s and early 1980s, different types of dance music continued to develop and be played in clubs in the Midwest, especially in Chicago and Detroit. The first important genre of dance music to develop during this period was Chicago house, and this music strongly influenced musicians in the nearby city of Detroit. Young African American musicians from Detroit would travel to Chicago every weekend to hear house music, and they began creating their own style of and approach to electronic dance music at home. This genre of music came to be called techno. Musicians created techno with electronic instruments such as synthesizers, computers, samplers, drum machines, and multi-track mixers.
Objectives
- Recall several important technological developments and instruments from the late 1970s and early 1980s
- Identify the musical predecessors of Detroit techno music
- Recall the musical and socioeconomic factors that led to the development of Detroit techno
- Examine the development and dissemination of techno into the 1990s
Introduction
As the term "disco" lost favor in the late 1970s and early 1980s, different types of dance music continued to develop and be played in clubs in the Midwest, especially in Chicago and Detroit. The first important genre of dance music to develop during this period was Chicago house, and this music strongly influenced musicians in the nearby city of Detroit. Young African American musicians from Detroit would travel to Chicago every weekend to hear house music, and they began creating their own style of and approach to electronic dance music at home. This genre of music came to be called techno, and for a while, it dominated the underground music scene of Detroit.
The musicians of techno saw their music as intellectual, innovative, future-oriented, and abstract. As a genre, techno prioritized electronic instrumental sounds over vocals or other musical instruments. Techno is an African American music, like rhythm and blues, blues, soul, and funk. Unlike these genres of African American music, however, lyrics are of secondary importance in techno. If a techno track does contain lyrics, they are usually performed by an electronic instrument rather than by a human singer.
"The spirit of house music, electronic music, in the beginning was to break the rules, to do things in many different ways."
