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It's a super complicated history.

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.

> The four-on-the-floor itself was already a feature on electronic club music like Trans Europe Express by Kraftwerk

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

Sorry, I meant the album. Europe Endless, the opening tune, features a prominent four to the floor.

> However: those European acts that were called "Techno" in the early 80s are now retroactively called "Electro" or "Synth Pop".

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.

I totally agree with you, but would also add that electro and techno kind of have the same meaning to me now. If someone ask about it I would reply back what their favourite guitar music is, because it's not a genre anymore but style how to make music. Namely electronic or technology focused

There was also an Electro revival in the 2000s that sounds nothing like the original, people called it electroclash but now I see a lot of people calling it just electro.

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.

It's mostly a categorical problem - techno is a hard term to pin down. I've been thinking for the past few years that late 60s/early 70s prog-rock played a much more substantial role in it then I had initially assumed for the 20 years prior. Take say Tocatta from ELP's BSS album: https://youtu.be/Qk8jAuVzga8?t=494 ... that's 1973 - a careful ear will recognize many later standard patterns packed in that small clip. There's tons of these little 20-second or so clips that are 20 years ahead of their time in the prog-rock from the era.

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

> Let's call these things Techno v.0.1-0.8 or so.

Yep, that’s definitely what it is. Still not stylistically homogenous as late techno, but lots of ideas and the foundation was already there.

In my version of the history of Techno, "Yello"[0] also deserves very honorable mention.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yello

> there was already some music from the Frankfurt Tape Scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT_K28uMxNY

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?).

This post omits the substantial Japanese contributions to techno and I am not sure why.

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!

I always figure what makes house and techno different from earlier electronic music and contemporaneous synthpop is more contextual than musical. House and techno tended to be made by individuals, not by bands. It was put together by people who started with synthesizers, and then stopped with synthesizers. There was no attempt to even fake that there was some live drummer or live keyboard player as part of the "performance". In the case of house (perhaps less so with techno), the goal was to get your tracks played by DJs who were mixing them up with other tracks played at local nightclubs, it was not to end up on Top of the Pops. I think this difference in motivation matters, because it explains better how house and techno evolved into what they are today.

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.

If we go by this, then part of Detroit Techno is also out. Or at least Juan Atkins, one of the Belleville three:

Cybotron was a rock band with guitars. They only started doing electronic-only music later.

There are two Cybotrons. One is an Australian rock band from the 70s and the other is Juan Atkins and Richard Davis from Detroit. While the latter had some rock influence as well, they predominantly did “Detroit electro” driven by drum machines like the 808, prime example being Clear.

Nope. I’m talking about the same Cybotron. Jon-5 was an early member and he was a guitar player. Eventually he quit since the direction changed. But there's still some guitars in some tracks in the Enter album. And Juan Atkins later left because Richard Davis wanted to focus on rock again.

Atkins’ contributions to techno go well beyond Cybotron.

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.)

Also see The History of Tape Looping[1], which starts in the 1940s, though you can definitely take the roots of electronic music back much further.

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)

[4] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CM8uBGANASc

[5] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delia_Derbyshire

Love the references, but describing a Dr Who theme as "dance" sounds like a stretch.

Just to further highlight how muddied the origin waters are, there absolutely was a connection to Depeche Mode. At one point, the band stopped by The Music Institute, one of the clubs considered a "birthplace" of Detroit Techno. Interestingly, Kai Alce (aside: highly recommend checking out his work if you're unfamiliar) from the quote below recently shared this New Yorker piece in support of Detroit being the origin 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...

Yep.

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.

It's not (just) journalists doing this.

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.

Massive amount of ignorance demonstrated here by blaming journalists. This has been a heavy debate within the dance music scene as far back as the earliest days of the Belleville Three. Nearly every fan/everyone involved in the scene has an opinion as to where the genesis was.

> Zappa and P Funk

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".

I was referring to stuff like this that I've read over the years where Zappa's name gets dropped, I'm no expert myself https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/experimental-german-m...

Yeah, Zappa's name is dropped but he really had absolutely nothing to do with this. In the link you gave, it merely happened to be the case that Zappa was at a festival at which Amon Düül, Tangerine Dream and Guru Guru performed. That's a bit like pointing to some particular at Coachella or Glastonbury and finding that both Beyonce and Chvrches performed (i.e. the only connection is being in the same place).

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.