This feature, sent to me by Dave Segal, is on Pitchfork’s website and concerns the early connections between Chicago House and Detroit Techno. Several founding figures from both genres are interviewed, and an explanation of how techno came to be techno is provided. Two things: Early in Carl Sagan’s book Cosmos, there’s a description of two stars that are so close to each other that they exchange “star stuff.” Similarly, the cities of Chicago and Detroit are only separated by a four-hour drive. This propinquity has resulted in the exchange of cultural stuff—music machines, musical ideas, music programs, and so on—between the cities. The Pitchfork feature also brings to light the fact that the term techno was willed and enforced by Juan Atkins (Cybotron, Model 500, Infinity). At the time (the early 80s), most Detroit producers were under the impression that they were making a variation of Chicago’s house music, but Juan put his foot down and established a clear line between the two forms of urban music. Such determination is always admirable. Weak artists are happy with formless grays and blurs; strong artists have, as Nabokov once put it, strong opinions and make strong statements. But there was a hidden agenda behind Juan Atkins’s enforcement of the distinction, one that is mentioned in this excellent academic essay about the history of techno: Atkins didn’t want to be identified with gay music. Techno is hetero; house is homo. In the end, Atkins succeeded in giving techno the distinction of being more futuristic, more about technology than house music, but he failed to make the hetero/homo distinction stick.
For example, very recently I had a neighbor over at my apartment for a session of popping-and-locking. My neighbor is black, male, and about my age, and so we know all of the basic moves from back in the day. At one point of our session, I decided that Model 500’s techno classic “No UFO” (which was used in 2000 to launch the Ford Focus—an exchange between art and economics that deserves serious Marxist consideration) would work best with a move I stole from Mr. Freeze in 1984 (shaking like you are very cold), but after playing just a few measures of the “four to the floor” beat, my guest said, “Fuck that fag shit. Turn it off.” Seeing that he was really not happy with the music, that his sense of sexuality was quickly melting, I pressed Stop and played instead Cybotron’s “Clear,” which has an electrofunk beat. The point is this: Techno is gay futurist music made by heteros, and nothing will ever change or hide that fact.