It's true, Detroit has severe structural problems: enormous amounts of the population are migrating away from the city, many of the people who actually spend the most time there don't reside in the city limits, manufacturing has vanished along with the population - leaving scores of empty buildings - and the class make-up is overwhelmingly impoverished. But to make a documentary that emphasizes those elements as defining reeks of a gratuity that sees Detroit's flaws as arresting photographic gimmicks instead of components to a more nuanced picture (that - surprise, surprise - includes the existence of middle and upper classes). Their exclusion is partially explicable as foreign eyes caricaturing and simplifying dynamics that being native or at least invested in a country/city would add some dimension to. But that topical exclusion is more grounded in an intellectual judgment that suffers from a willingness to embrace easy narratives which coincide with already existing assumptions and stereotypes.
Black people are poor. Black cities are poor. Black youth need help. Having black electronic artists means that black youth have an outlet for escaping poverty. Those of us in more comfortable positions can sit back and nod sympathetically as the pictures lull us into thinking that we understand their plight before torrenting the albums with the songs we liked from the documentary. But the internal narrative of the video is contradicted by the history of the very music it's is intended to cover. Belleville, Michigan - the acknowledged origin of Detroit techno - isn't some kind of ghetto city, and Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson weren't poor kids that found Roland TR-909's by digging through suburban trashcans and going on to create a whole genre by themselves. Painting the rich history of Detroit music as yet another incident of gems managing to exist in dirt (though there's some of that) is a tiresome trajectory that completely misses the substance of what Detroit techno is informed by: the presence and subsequent decline of the black middle class that nearly all of the first and second wave of Detroit artists belong to.
The afro-centric futurism, the Underground Resistance-style black radicalism and the escapist-ridden need to embrace and encapsulate the aesthetics of a society that doesn't exist through subtle invocations of black empowerment is a black middle class artistic tradition that predates their own contributions by several decades. You simply can't understand their music by looking at its origins and going "Oh, Detroit's poor, so everything that comes from it is a result of poverty". The mono-generational accumulation of black wealth faced with the impending promise of its loss is what gave birth to it to begin with. That's an entirely different thing with entirely different implications. I find it odd to see intra-black class dynamics and how they influenced the societal alienation/futurism Detroit techno embraced go almost entirely unmentioned in favor of the "Detroit is just poor" narrative. But let's assume that the picture they paint is true. Let's assume that "Woe Is Detroit" is a warranted refrain and let's assume that Detroit's distinction as a sad city with nothing but the irrevocably poor is true.
What do they plan on doing about it?
Everyone knows that Electrifying Mojo was integral to giving a bunch of kids who would have never heard anything outside of Motown a more international musical experience. Everyone knows that radio is a cheap and accessible form of entertainment. Why hasn't Resident Advisor proposed making a Detroit office in addition to their Berlin and London offices that's dedicated to igniting and popularizing Detroit music, from Detroit, to Detroit? I mean, if this is not poverty porn, if they truly care about paying respect to the Place That Started It All, if they really, really want to honor electronic music's origins, wouldn't it be nice if they desired to reignite or at least fund and market a positive intra-city influence similar to this:
It's easy to flaunt our "realistic" bona fides and observe that something like that will never happen, but I'm reminded of the Mad Mike segment quoted in a previous post bemoaning Europe's near-exclusive interest in consuming and taking the music with no interest in popularizing it or supporting it external to their regionally narrow consumption. This strikes me as another contribution to that approach. It takes inspiration from Detroit, it takes clout and authenticity from its artists European-centric popularity, it takes aesthetic poignancy from its visuals. By portraying Detroit as an empty, dead city with nothing to offer but a few poor guys willing to endure its mediocrity to make good music it even takes Detroit's dignity. What is it giving back?
We were blessed. The guy who really laid the blueprint for Detroit Techno, you know him many times he's been mentioned - in fact a woman in France, Jacqueline Caux did a movie about this guy. His name was Electrifying Mojo. Mojo was a Vietnam war veteran, he was a radio man in Vietnam, he did DJing for the troops, and that's where he learned all the different types of music from around the world, and when he got back from Vietnam, he brought that to Detroit, that perspective, so we got to hear progressive rock up next to Falco, Euro synth pop. Of course he introduced Kraftwerk, which for Detroit was huge, he introduced Prince, George Clinton, all these great synth artists that used synthesizers for bass lines and stuff. 'Flashlight' was first played, I'm sure, in Detroit, because Mojo would break the records for the artists. He broke Juan [Atkins'] early records, Juan's early Model 500, Cybotron stuff. We were really blessed with that wide perspective. I thought it was happening all over the country, because Mojo was so huge, but of course it wasn't, it was only happening in Detroit. So I think he really opened up the ears, and the inspiration, and the minds of young Detroit kids, and I think that's where the whole concept for Detroit techno came from, from Mojo.
We listened to music that I guess in other places would be considered geeky music, or dorky, or whatever. I think personally, and I never got to say this in the interview that I did for the movie for him, I think he ended gang warfare in Detroit with one band. A lot of guys will know what I'm talking about. That summer, the gang warfare was at a height, and Mojo would get on the radio and ask for peace, pray for peace, and then drop the B52s, man. 'Rock Lobster'. You know it. Truthfully, you can't be too much of a tough guy while doing the rock lobster. The whole vibe of being mean.
The gang thing was deep in 78 and 79, it had to be early 80s when he dropped that, that shit ended it. It was the B52s and cocaine, because once cocaine came, a lot of the gangs started selling the drugs. But the B52s had a huge influence, I don't why, but cats wouldn't fight off that record. You know, when you play Funkadelic, that's fighting music, 'Flashlight' was a fighting song, 'One Nation Under a Groove' was a skating song, but B52s had a calming effect.
God, you need to climb out of your own ass hole.
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