The Battle over Techno’s Origins
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
the wikipedia article on the Belleville Three says the "first wave of Detroit techno" was some of the future members meeting and forming Cybotron, releasing Alleys of Your Mind in 1981 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMHNhJJnve4 to me this is quite clearly Kraftwerk inspired, and Kraftwerk had been going for about 10 years at that point.
1981 puts them after Devo had been around awhile, and Talking Heads and B-52s, which were more pop but featured many of these sounds, and contemporaneous with Depeche Mode, Eurythmics, and Yaz/Yazoo.
Two years later Cybotron released Clear which is Kraftwerk blended with more of a funk sound https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3QHj7lai9I
I'm not trying to assign/give/take credit, just saying here's what they sounded like and who else sounded similar to me. Zappa and P Funk are generally noted as having explored these sounds early on, but I don't enjoy their stuff so much so I don't listen to it much. This comment is a bit of "you might try listening to this" if you're interested.
I don't remember when we all started saying techno, it was definitely in full swing in the 90's, I think it was the 80's but gotta admit, I dunno.
Of course, all genres are arbitrary and there continues to be lots of cross-pollination between electronic music that is mainstream/popular and the stuff people are just throwing together in their bedrooms for their mates online or for the local party scene.
Cybotron was a rock band with guitars. They only started doing electronic-only music later.
When Atkins left the group, he started recording solo under the aliases Model 500 and (later) Infiniti. The early Model 500 releases like “No UFOs”, in addition to being absolute classics, demonstrate the progression from electro to what we would now call Detroit techno. He also collaborated with many of the Berlin techno pioneers in the 90s, forming a key link between the two cities.
Not to mention that Atkins mentored May, Saunderson, and many of the other techno originators.
(ps. Cybotron is not really techno, IMO. It is better categorized as electro with a few prog-rock and post-punk flourishes, a sort of proto-techno. But pointing this out makes you kind of a pedantic bore, so most are happy to go along with calling Cybotron techno.)
Nothing worse than when journalists try to turn the genesis of musical genres into a defined, definite thing and play the game of accusing some of "stealing" from others. It's absurd, and defies everything about art.
There's a serious rift in the world between those who view (Detroit) techno as "Kraftwerk, but a bit different" and "yes, inspired in part by Kraftwerk but actually its own genre". There's an important racial/cultural subtext to those two origin stories as well.
I've seen this argument play out on various blogs, podcasts and even a couple of college level courses over the past 10 years.
Kraftwerk started being called "Techno-pop" around 1978 by a Japanese critic, and the term caught on in Europe. "Techno" alone was a term being thrown around in 1982, perhaps earlier, by German press (and even Billboard seems to have used it) to talk about electronic music in general, from Kraftwerk to New Order to Front-242.
However: those European acts that were called "Techno" in the early 80s are now retroactively called "Electro" or "Synth Pop".
Interestingly, the early-80s Bellevue Three music, by the way, is much closer to the "Electro" camp, as the popular tunes often lacks the four-to-the-floor associated with today's techno (which the article itself talks about), and feature a breakbeat instead (check out Afrikaa Bambaata for comparison).
The four-on-the-floor itself was already a feature on electronic club music like Trans Europe Express by Kraftwerk and I Feel Love by Donna Summer, both 1977. Italo Disco (early 80s) also mainly featured that drum beat.
The term "Detroit Techno" and the style itself, featuring the four-on-the-floor, only appeared in the late 1980s. Some people say 1987/1988.
And to make matters more complicated: by the time Detroit Techno was flourishing, there was already some music from the Frankfurt Tape Scene that was starting to sound like modern Techno (EDIT: some examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT_K28uMxNY). It wasn't something that happened overnight, in Europe it mostly evolved from Acid House (which also used the four-to-the-floor as a rule), while in Detroit it evolved from Electro.
To me, the confusion happens because of some disagreements about terminology. First, groups that Europeans called "Techno" are now being called "Synth Pop" or "Electro" because they sound different from modern dancefloor Techno, or because they made more diverse music (Bigod 20 and Nitzer Ebb are called EBM). Second, the misconception that early-80s Detroit music was "the real Techno", when in reality it wasn't exactly modern techno, it was closer to Kraftwerk and Afrika Bambaata.
In reality there was a lot of music being called Techno and a very rich heritage, but some people want to say theirs was "the real first", while in reality it's not that simple.
TEE by Kraftwerk is not four-on-the-floor.
See "Analyzing Kraftwerk's Beats" for a full explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qhcp6iVWbw
This has been my core insight, any one person you are talking to may well be correct given their location and time that they learned about these things.
To 2023 me, "Electro" doesn't have enough information to know for sure what music you mean, but in early 2000's in the Australian club scene, Electro was a specific sub-genere of modern club house. We would probably call it electro-house now that it's not the current zeitgeist.
The fact that I know for sure people will disagree with that is how I know the former insight is right, it's very dependent on time and place, and there is no authority.
In the end, the differences are minimal, and the more trivial they are, the more people squabble about it. Add or remove a keyboard pad and you have a new genre which people will hate.
Along with that are space age and lounge jazz. Take Hugo Montenegro – Moog Power from 1969 for instance or the Mort Garson album under the name Atraxia from 1975.
I used to think these weren't part of the story but I've been coming around on it and think of it as "technos" Xerox PARC era, the first attempt at the future world that electro and 80s disco took the lead on.
We separate rock from techno categorically but I think it's a limitation and mistake if we're trying to figure out the influences and history. That's a modern distinction. E2-E4 came out of that, to put things back in to West Germany - an album heavily cited as influence regardless which originating American school you want to focus on (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ys0HyevZpQg). Of course put that guy back in 1975 and you get more Xerox PARC style prog rock inventions, this time for electric guitar https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=khejrbgdc4w *
Let's call these things Techno v.0.1-0.8 or so.
This stuff is complicated. It's like how Wes Craven said the opening chords of the Gary Wright's pop song "Dream Weaver" was his inspiration for Freddy Krueger. (those first 30 seconds ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZKuzwPOefs) Things are weird.
* if you like that style check out Michael C Sharp such as https://michaelcsharp.bandcamp.com/album/trip-further which will combine some mid-era, (also called Berlin school) analog synths as well
Yep, that’s definitely what it is. Still not stylistically homogenous as late techno, but lots of ideas and the foundation was already there.
What tunes are you wanting to highlight? Skimming that video and I recognise Frankie Knuckles, Farley "Jackmaster" Funk, Mike "Hitman" Wilson (all Chicago House) and The KLF (British erm... Rave?).
Technopop was not just some journalist’s genre descriptor for Kraftwerk. It was a rich genre originated in Japan by Yellow Magic Orchestra, who combined Kraftwerk’s sound with a more pop sensibility.
Many of the Detroit techno originators have cited YMO alongside Kraftwerk as a key influence.
Two key contributions from YMO come to mind, but there are many others:
YMO’s “Technopolis,” recorded in 1979, might have been the first dance music track to use the word “techno”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek1oCwp7oms
Their 1981 version of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Thousand Knives” is often cited as the first track to use the Roland TR-808: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2d37oySCfk
ps: Technopop would later evolve into what we know as city pop, and eventually present-day J-pop. The sound quickly diverged from what we would recognize as techno; the early releases in the genre are the most important for this discussion, especially YMOs since those were by far the most accessible in the US. It’s all interesting to listen to though!
Zappa? Do you mean Zapp as in Zapp & Roger ? I've never heard anyone credit Frank Zappa with any exploratory forays into what became known as "techno".
Zappa's own explorations are amazing (watch parts of Live at the Roxy to get an idea of his ensemble at its best, and there's oodles of other incredible rock-infused-with-jazz-and-classical-understandings in his output), but they really have essentially nothing at all to do with the evolution of techno.
>The Music Institute’s juice bar – in tandem with its membership scheme – helped the owners keep a “grip on the tone” of the club, according to Miller. Only Depeche Mode seemed to object to the no alcohol policy. John McCready, reporting on Detroit techno for The Face in 1989, escorted the band to the bar. “Then they got there and realized there was no liquor, and it was too late to get them any,” said Kai Alcé, who had been hired to work the coat check. “Waters all round,” was Martin Gore’s rueful response.
https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2017/05/music-institut...
While only briefly mentioned in the above history, here's Steve Reich, in a piece he made in a 1966 piece called Come Out[2][3], which definitely has the seeds of repetitive electronic music like techno (it's pretty long, I recommend starting about 9'27" in if you don't want to listen to the whole thing).
Though it couldn't be mistaken for a full techno track, I would not be at all surprised to hear something like a portion of that in a lot of electronic music today, almost 60 years later. It sounds a lot more modern than Kraftwerk, anyway.
And here[4] is Delia Derbyshire's[5] Dr Who rendition from 1963... a fully realized electronic dance track, also long, long before Kraftwerk.
[1] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Y8t10LMuk
[2] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g0WVh1D0N50
[3] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_Out_(Reich)
There are perhaps people who have a legitimate case to be made that they have been left out of the history. I remember one DJ from Chicago (Leonard "Remix" Rroy) who wasn't part of the Warehouse clique and spent years telling everyone who listened that he did at least as much to pioneer house music in the city as Frankie Knuckles. But The Belleville Three and Underground Resistance are not that. I was hoping this article would reveal more untold stories like that one, not the same mythology that's already been around for almost three decades at this point.
The people this article claimed were snubbed had this to say:
>According to Banks, Kraftwerk was in the audience that night at Tresor. He spotted the band members and rushed to tell Jeff Mills, who didn’t believe him until he saw Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in the back of the room. Banks said that it was like seeing living legends, the guys who provided the blueprints for their own souped-up sound. He said that Hütter and Schneider were just grateful to be recognized by the next generation of techno whiz kids. “We talked for a second in that narrow, dingy stairwell going to the surface,” Banks said, before switching to a comically bad German accent. “ ‘Thank you for remembering us,’ they said.”
Thanks for this. Never heard it before and it's a great track that's very danceable unlike lots of other esoteric/experimental music that pursue atonal/arhythmic horrors. I love the garage-punk/skiffle rawness compared to electronic perfection.
This isn't an trade rag, it's the New Yorker & The New Yorker has a broad reader base. I don't think it's a stretch to say most readers aren't listening to house music beyond top 40 radio hits.
Of the people reading this that actually care, they already know how influential Germany and the Midwest US were at their respective times.
After putting it in writing, my initial impression of the article as just "strange" may have been too mild. It seems a hell of a lot like it's meant to inflame culture war bullshit among uninvolved parties more than anything else.
The cats from Detroit were certainly influenced by Kraftwerk. People from Detroit always accuse white Europeans of cultural appropriation.
But you don't see them pointing fingers at themselves when they go to countries where the dollar is worth a lot of money, buy all the local records and take them home to sample and make hip-hop or house music and with that make a lot of money.
For example, an underground house music duo called "Detroit Swindle" changed their stage name under pressure from Detroit artists.
A famous German DJ, who used the name "Motor City Drum Ensemble," also felt pressured and no longer uses that name, but he had an "odd" argument: he's from Stuttgart, also known as a "Motor City"
But people from Detroit didn't buy that argument. Anyway, all of this is egoistic and elitist nonsense from either side you look at it. If you look closely, couldn't the inventor of drum machines claim to be the inventor of techno, then? What about the inventor of TB303?
https://happymag.tv/frippertronics/:
"In September of 1972, the pair met in Eno’s London home studio, where he had set up a tape system developed by avant-garde composers Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros."
> Of course, in the hands of any creative musician, I think it would only take a week
Pretty much! Musique Concrète basically starts with the invention of magnetic tape. Electronic music itself basically starts with the vacuum tube.
Humans just really like making new sounds and music. If we invent any new tech that makes an odd noise, there will be a bunch of stoned grad students jamming with it later that day.
"The situation escalated when Peter Feldmann, then the mayor of Frankfurt, sent an invitation for momem’s opening party welcoming guests “in the middle of Frankfurt, where techno has its origin.” The accumulated snubs set off a conflagration in the fiercely protective techno community".
This is silly. Of course the mayor of Frankfurt is gonna promote his shiny new museum, and probably doesn't know a ton about the Detroit scene.
That's not a reason to frame this as whitewashed, or blame the German effort to highlight their works.
What we need is more US support for the electronic music community. Like the article states, non profits like that German museum are not as much of a thing here.
It should be, and I can think of other people than the mayor of Frankfurt to direct your angry DMs to, to make things better.
A typical New Yorker attempt at maximizing controversy by framing a German city celebrating it's own techno pioneers as "stealing credit" for techno from Detroit.
As a guy who got into electronic music in the mid 90s and has seen the likes of Derrick May/Juan Atkins/Richie Hawtin live on multiple occasions, I really hate this attempt to try to turn every music genre into another "Elvis stole it" narrative. One of the most amazing things about the US techno/rave scene was how incredibly racially inclusive it always was, primarily because it was so dominated by gay Americans of all races who found that they faced aggressive bigotry from all skin colors. Hell, the Detroit techno scene really kicked off in the clubs that catered to Detroit's black middle class in the burbs, because the inner city Detroit black clubs were filled with aggressively, violently homophobic dudes looking for an excuse to beat people up.
I have fond memories of the absolute color-blindness of clubs in DC (Buzz/Nation) and Baltimore and yes, Detroit too. Nobody who lived through this scene would think that the Frankfurt museum is coming at the expense of the Belleville crew, ever.
Journalists love making things about racism. It's an immediate click magnet, but it's just gross to see something that was so beautiful cast in an inaccurate light by some journalist who was indoctrinated into a race obsessed, univariate model of human social interactions by a university professor.
This is a common thread that folk in their shoes have been feeling for decades, and they've never really been silent about it.
One wonders if they’d instead built the museum in Stuttgart at the site of the old Kling Klang studio if the New Yorker would still try to frame this as “whitewashing”.
Dusseldorf!
But your point stands.
Not sure what was going on in my head when I typed that. I thinking Düsseldorf but typing something else I swear. :)
Even have Fortuna as my Bundesliga club. I will never live this down!
/shakes head and walks off sobbing.
Source: live in Frakfurt
Short documentary on UR on YT - https://youtu.be/fe7sC4SAvc0
Exactly this.
Journalism is such a joke these days - their agenda of sowing discord is blatant. Those familiar with the history of techno wouldn't call it a battle at all. It was about P.L.U.R. It wasn't pretentious and divisive like this generation.
I feel like a broken record in this thread so maybe I should just move on, but comments like these genuinely confuse me. This has been a debate within the scene going back decades, and has always been a point of contention for many of the people who were in the Detroit scene during it's inception. They've always claimed it as theirs and have often taken umbrage or scoffed when people have claimed it's European in origin.
It was about unity, yes, but as the scene grew in the late 80's/early 90's, so did the battle over it's origins.
I was just saying that I'm surprised that people in this thread are blaming contemporary journalists or, to borrow your phrase, "this generation" for this discussion, when in point of fact the Belleville Three have been having this "pretentious and divisive discussion" since at least the early 90's and they were born in the early 60's.
Like the 60s festival promoters before them, they may have sold peace and love, but they were really in it for themselves.
There was also a lot of drug abuse and sexual assault, and the criminal activity that comes along with the drug trade. Not everyone had a good time.
https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit-guides/inside-detroits-se...
This might be interesting:
When Detroit Techno Came to the UK https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2018/05/when-detroit-t...
"The Roots of Techno: Detroit’s Club Scene 1973–1985" https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2014/07/roots-of-techn...
When Techno Was House https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2017/08/chicago-house-...
More like these here: https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/detroit
> There are whole libraries full of books about how white music culture is just a safe and boring pastiche of black music culture. From Jazz to Blues to Rock n Roll to Funk and to a lesser extent even Hip Hop, white America's greatest musical innovations have all been sheepishly stolen from the black man, often without any credit or compensation.
> Rarely is it mentioned that cultural appropriation works both ways, that on a select few occasions the black man has also stolen -- and expanded upon -- the innovations of square-ass stuffy-headed white dorks. Electro is one of those genres. And those square-ass stuffy-headed white dorks were Kraftwerk.
(he also asks important questions like "If Bambaataa is the focal point for the immortalization of Kraftwerk and the existence of Electro, would we be having this discussion if he sampled YMO instead?")
and on Techno:
> Affluent middle class black youth living in the peaceful Detroit suburb of Belleville Michigan in the late 70s, raised by the scions of the automative industry. They had money to spend and parties to attend but rather than identify with the harsh street sounds of Rap coming out of New York, they looked instead toward mainland Europe to emulate the latest trends in fashion and music. [...]
> Detroit Techno was never more than a regional genre and it never blew up like House, Garage or Rap. That is, until 1988 when this generic mean-nothing uneventful compilation [Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit] made it overseas [...] If they called it Poopyfart, today we would all be waxing nostalgic about the oldskool Detroit Poopyfart sound of the Belleville Trio.
> The Detroit Techno dudes who grew up idolizing European synthesizer music were now idolized in Europe. This spawned a number of Techno subgenres across the ocean, all of them interesting for various reasons that have nothing to do with Detroit. [...] But it was the word 'Techno' that blew up and not the actual sound, and for this reason Detroit felt somewhat ashamed to associate their city with marked-up prancing goofball euroshite [...]
> With time comes restitution. Detroit took the word back with a big-ass music festival, an exhibit in the Detroit Historical Museum (right beside the Motown exhibit) [...] Things have come full circle. Techno is once again the embodiment of Detroit.
I could be totally wrong here, but Techno is more than just loops 4x4 beats, and so is House, so it's kind of apples and oranges. I'd associated Techno with Germany and House with America, I'm not sure there's a valid dispute here?
The particular character of music genres shifts over time because the primary function of genres is not consistency but rather a superficial purity that temporarily preserves the scenes in which culture is incubated.
There definitely was a lot of overlap: https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2017/08/chicago-house-...
I feel like rarely see anyone claiming its roots in Miami Bass, but it seems obvious to me, e.g. tracks like "I wanna rock" by Luke and more to the point, this original version of "Wiggle wiggle?"
This is often considered the first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl-PrF5yNNY
Interestingly, the "Bass" of Drum n' Bass, more specificaly the "Reese Bass" sound, was invented by Kevin Saunderson of the Belleville Three. In early DnB, this is as iconic as the drums. In late-90s DnB this was even more prominent than the Amen Break, IMO.
Oh there's a really good BBC documentary about this, I remember me and some friends watched it years ago and we were laughing about how they made dillinja dress like a total dork ass for the telly, at that point he was still living with his parents apparently haha. Cool shots of his DAW setup with an Atari ST running what looks like early cubase [3]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bEgAVxtoHI
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLhUyWWTq6Q
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/oct/28/shut-up-and-da...
A commonly first claimed Jungle track is Lennie De Ice, We Are I.E. recorded 89 released 91. Sampling the Amen Break was common in breakbeat / rave but it became Jungle when it got that dub bassline.
The Rolland drum machines as designed / intended were a failure. It wasn't until they were "repurposed" making "dance music" did they find a nichec/ market. But those machines were not originally intended to make "dance music".
Thank God for Rolland's willingness to fail.
Pretty sure I heard it also sampled in a track from some years ago.
I explored a bit of the Detroit history last year but can’t remember the following:
Did any links exist between Motown and techno? Did techno find its place thanks to the remnants of Motown’s existence?
Chez Damier would be one of them. He cut his chops in Chicago with House music before moving to Detroit and being one of the founders of The Music Institute, one of the first Detroit Techno clubs (and mentioned in the New Yorker piece).
Aside: He's also one of the humblest people in the scene, and still one of the best DJs I've seen. Caught him a few weeks back and I cut a serious rug for 3+ hours. 24 hours later you could still ring sweat out of my shirt.
Edit: I'd argue that (and as this whole thread demonstrates, a lot of history around this can't really be pinned down, so a lot of it is just personal opinion) you wouldn't have House and Techno if you didn't have Motown, followed by Disco.
The label itself had moved to LA in the 60s. I think the Motown style had passed on by then to Disco which had also passed into High NRG / Italdisco when House/Techno started rising. The early House singers were coming from Church/Gospel like they did for Motown so in some ways they are also siblings with a shared parent.
That isn't to say that those Motown artists weren't influential at all, quite the opposite. I love how the great musicians in multiple genres, Rock/Pop/EDM, are in total awe of them. They have global influence. I just haven't seen a unique connection for Detroit/Chicago because of the geography.
>I don't think you listen to Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes etc. and say to yourself "This is the direct parent of Techno!".
Yes and no, IMO. I certainly wouldn't say that you can hear much that would prompt you to call it "the direct parent of Techno". But there's plenty of it that you can hear within House and Disco, also IMO. There's a direct line of influence, as you say, that I can hear; Motown -> Disco -> House -> Techno.
>I just haven't seen a unique connection for Detroit/Chicago because of the geography.
I struggle to see how anyone can't see it. It's not like everyone involved with Motown uprooted themselves and moved to Los Angeles in the 60's. Many people stayed in Detroit and continued to make that kind of music in Detroit. It's in the city's blood, in their musical DNA. It's close to their heart and they absolutely take a strong influence from it. Not just in dance music, Detroit's own J Dilla was heavily influenced by it and he didn't start producing anything until the early 90's (someone correct me if I'm wrong on the timing there), after Techno had been around for a bit and well after Motown had left the city.
Hell, the Belleville Three were born and raised in Detroit in the early 60's; it would've been impossible to have lived there and not been surrounded by Motown. Plenty of other artists who were doing things in the 80's also would've grown up around a lot of the Motown sound, and have always been vocal about it's influence in what they do. Motown didn't bail on Detroit until 1972[1], giving the aforementioned trio at least a decade of living right next door to the label.
But the geography point I was specifically making, and maybe I wasn't clear about, was more tied to Motown's influence in House music. There's a much more "obvious" connection between the two when you listen to the two genres than there is between Motown and Techno, as you've said. But I truly don't think that there'd be (Detroit) Techno without House (and House as we know it without Motown). The two cities are geographically close to one another (a mere ~4-hour drive) and intrinsically linked. Plenty of the originators of each sound would go back and forth between the two cities to immerse themselves in the scenes and the sounds. You can dive back into interviews with these artists and find them sharing stories of what it was like traveling from one city to the next and immersing themselves in the sound. There was plenty in the way of House that influenced and led to Detroit Techno.
That's why I tried to pick an example of a House artist, Chez, moving from Chicago and ending up being heavily involved with pushing Detroit Techno forward; co-founding The Music Institute and giving the sound a home, and helped run Kevin Saunderson's KMS label.
The War on House!
House the same I believe in Chicago, love that acid. Note the audience is mostly black [2]
These people are having way more fun than any of us will ever hope to
I think what needs to be pointed out more than anything is that back in these times the scene around electronic music was a radical racial integrator. You had skinheads, rastas, and football hooligan ultras all partying with each other instead of fighting. I mean I think we all know how that worked (It involved a certain lubricant) but I still think that people are missing the point with this shit these days so hard
If techno was started in detroit, then in terms of origin stories, the above quote is completely disconnected. Yes, you had skinheads, rastas and football hooligan ultras all partying with each other, but that in the England, in the 90s, mostly after ecstasy arrived.
> Although primarily referring to the summer of 1988 it lasted into the summer of 1989, when electronic dance music and the prevalence of the drug MDMA fuelled an explosion in youth culture culminating in mass free parties and the era of the rave.
I was at clubs in London (both as a punter and as DJ) in 1980-83, and ecstasy, if a thing at all, was not widely available or used. Its use ballooned later than that.
And it was 1994 before the UK government attempted to ban raves by banning a certain kind of music. I left the UK in 1989, and felt very disconnected from the rave scene that was happening at that time, but it is definitely my impression that it did not blow up into a truly massive scale till after 1990, though it was certainly alive and well at the end of the 80s.
If it involves freeform rhythmic dancing based on drums, black people probably invented it. It's a simple heuristic that hasn't steered me wrong yet. Any claim of non-rhythmic people that cant dance inventing a genre of dance music should immediately raise suspicion.
This is racist and harmful rhetoric. There exist a plethora of cultures and music has been independently developed and is core to them all as their humanity. Please do honest research before making racially motivated statements.
It's not racist or harmful to state the historical fact that sub-tropical people have a long and strong relationship with drums that is unrivaled elsewhere on the planet.
Populations that exhibit no natural ability to move to drum based music could not invent drum based dance music genres except through derivation in which case its not invention, just mimicry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWUiLJnEYJI
People found this very inspiring and created their own variants.
The Detroit variant came along.
The Chicago variant came along.
The UK variant came along.
But it all goes back to Kraftwerk.
Other comment in this whole shit that didn't get downvoted to oblivion gets into better detail
Americans still deserve credit for making it danceable