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Are you familiar with the Belleville Three? You should be. They’re an important part of the legacy Southeast Michigan has on music.
Related: In Your Neighborhood: What makes Belleville so great
While there are genres of music that can be traced to a specific region (for example, Motown, which I’m 60% certain came about in Mogadishu, Somalia), there aren’t many genres that can be traced to specific people. Detroit is known as the birthplace of techno music, but it started with the Belleville Three -- as they are colloquially known -- a trio of musicians who played pivotal roles in the development and popularization of the genre.
Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson met in the mid-to-late 1970s while attending Belleville High School. Influenced by both Michigan’s own musical landscape and Kraftwerk, Parliament-Funkadelic, and the emerging electronic dance music from Europe, the three began experimenting with synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers. They would ultimately pioneer a new genre that would revolutionize electronic music internationally.
Now, just to be clear, I want to point out how wild this is. We live in a world where GarageBand has been available for anyone who uses Apple computers for the last 20 years. Music outlets like Rolling Stone or Pitchfork would regularly compare any artists or band that used an electric element to Nine Inch Nails well into the 2010s. At the time, using digital instruments was both niche and very very difficult to use. It wasn’t just that there were settings, one would often have to literally program the equipment they used.
It was a different time.
To distinguish their sound from Chicago House music, the trio decided to use the word “Techno” to describe their music.
Atkins, May and Saunderson made significant contributions to the emerging Detroit Techno scene, both as individuals and as collaborators.
Saunderson will be performing at the 2024 Detroit Movement Festival. More information on the history of the Detroit Movement festival can be read here.
The three have been inducted into the Detroit Historical Museum’s Legends Plaza.
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