Let’s make sure we’re on the same page about one thing: Techno is Black cultural production. Techno is Detroit’s motor city sound. When you ask early pioneers of this art form how the sound came to be, they’ll start by telling you how sequencers, samplers, and electronic audio gear became affordable by way of the American Federation of Musicians’ tax against electronic music in the mid-80s. This tax ensured bands and analog musicians were prioritized when booking shows and concerts. Musicians who could afford this equipment at original cost were finding it difficult to get gigs, and would consequently sell their gear at discounted rates or pledge them to pawn shops. This opened the door for a younger, more Black audience to scoop up these toys and start playing.

Meanwhile in a Detroit suburb in the mid-80s, Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, and Derrick May were pioneering a new sound that would birth a subculture. The three musicians were informed by Japanese synthpop (Ryuichi Sakamoto), European synthesizer music (Kraftwerk), The B-52’s, Prince, Parliament-Funkadelic, Donna Summer, among so many more. Known as the Belleville Three, these musicians were determined to experiment with emerging electronic tools to create a sound all their own and representative of a city undergoing dramatic change.

Following this development, Underground Resistance (UR) formed as a record label and collective of musicians who were interested in merging the sonic aesthetics of Techno with the social, political, and economic conditions of inner-city Detroit in a Reagan-era landscape. Formed in 1989 by musicians “Mad” Mike Banks, Jeff Mills, and Robert Hood, UR made Techno a sound for radical imagination by and for Black people—music for a movement.[1] UR rose in opposition to a more commercial music industry. With Motown down the way, UR wanted a label without rules; they performed with masks so audiences could focus more on the music instead of the artists as a package.

As music journalist David McNamee wrote in The Guardian in 2008, sampling “was the working-class Black answer to punk.”[2] Techno developed by way of people experimenting with equipment that was not meant for them to afford or own. And without the restrictions of an established electronic music industry, these artists found freedom of expression. No one was going to tell them what they could or could not do with their samplers and sequencers. There was no manual, no protocols.

Anyone who visits Detroit knows you don’t just show up and take up space. It’s a city that asks you to listen first and listen deeply. And when you do, you hear how the sonic culture is informed by Black labor. The auto production industry provides a historical backdrop for the invention of this sound. Juan Atkins mentions being the grandchild of a Ford auto worker who moved to Detroit during the Great Migration and how the plant’s equitable pay policies created generational opportunities for his family. Mike Banks himself worked as an auto worker and used to drag race cars as a way to finance his music projects. In writer Mike Rubin’s “Cosmic Cars” piece in Victory Journal, UR co-founder Banks tells Rubin, “Motown is affiliated with cruising; UR is associated with horsepower.” 

Speculative fiction and world-building are just as much a part of the music as the technical production. Many of the early techno groups affiliated with UR  were couched in mythology, making future visioning a central tenet to the genre. UR label affiliate Drexciya, a duo made up of James Stinson and Gerald Donald, reckons with a dark history by creating nautical Afrofuturist sounds inspired by their vision of an underwater country made up of those women and children lost during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. For Stinson and Donald, these people have not passed, but have instead adapted to life underwater, creating utopian kingdoms far greater than anything we’ve seen on land. The music and mythology serve to envision a world with protocols that are more equitable, celebratory, and just.

In recent years, UR has grown to be much more than a Detroit label. They are a global stakeholder in how the sound continues to grow and be studied. In Detroit, they have the Submerge, a space that is part Techno history museum and part record store. In the basement there are signatures from thousands of music fans around the world who know that visiting this site is an act of honoring the sound and the people who built it. In addition, UR is often sought out by audio gear manufacturers to consult on the direction of new music tools. For UR, digital equity and access are key to these consultations. Culture is shaped by the voices of those who have been pushed to the margins, so it’s important to them that young Black people are centered in the design and cost analysis of new technology. And to this point, they are now in the process of building a music residency and school for Detroit musicians that includes dedicated workshops with established artists and professional development opportunities. 

UR is so committed to place and to making sure the talents of their city are acclaimed at home and abroad because they carry with them stories of how the world could be. My favorite bit from the Underground Resistance Manifesto reads, “Techno is a music based in experimentation. It is music for the future of the human race. Without this music there will be no peace, no love, no vision.” 

Salome Asega is an artist and researcher whose practice celebrates dissensus and multivocality. She is currently a Technology Fellow in the Ford Foundation’s Creativity and Free Expression program area. Salome is also the co-host of speculative talk show Hyperorpia: 20/30 Vision on bel-air radio, and a director of POWRPLNT, a digital art collaboratory in Bushwick. Salome has participated in residencies and fellowships with Eyebeam, New Museum, The Laundromat Project, and Recess Art. She has exhibited and given presentations at the 11th Shanghai Biennale, Performa, EYEO, and the Brooklyn Museum. Salome received her MFA from Parsons at The New School in Design and Technology where she also teaches.