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Techno Fest Shatters Misconceptions About Rave Culture

Depending upon which perspective you take, the Detroit Electronic
Music Festival is either the beginning of the end or a new beginning.

The idea of a municipally ordained three-day party devoted to what
has, for more than a decade, remained a defiantly "underground"
culture - despite a global following large enough to qualify it as
mainstream - at first glance seems like one of the final steps toward
blunting whatever "edge" the post-rave universe still possesses.

The inaugural DEMF, which wrapped up yesterday, did draw its share of
bewildered Dockers-clad suburbanites, retirees and brave families. But
the Technicolor mobs of giddy dance-music devotees grooving before the
four stages, scattered throughout Hart Plaza and swarming downtown
Detroit's typically desolate waterfront, proved this ranked up there
with any other top-notch electronic festival.

Higher than most, in fact. This is the city that gave the world
techno, and there's a tremendously deep pool of internationally
revered talent to draw from - the music's three inventors,
DJ/producers Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, all graced
the main stage - that was more than happy to bring these sounds back
home, however belatedly.

And what better time to do it? While most of North America appears
caught up in a misinformed, media-fed crusade against dance-music
culture, the City of Detroit has taken the opposite tack and produced
spectacular results.

Contrary to Toronto, which has taken the "we don't get it, so we'll
stamp it out" approach, Detroit has pulled off a major feat of
youth-directed PR ("This is what the kids want, we'll give it to them.
For free") and, in the process, turned overdue respect for its musical
legacy into a major tourist draw.

By bringing the shadowy concept of "rave" into the daylight, too, and
letting the unfamiliar see that it really does come down to music and
dancing, the DEMF helped shatter some of the misconceptions that
bedevil dance-music culture. (There were drugs around, sure, but drugs
also show up at the Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival.)

"Come back tomorrow, and bring mom and dad," brayed one of the MCs on
a festival side stage Sunday night. "Do yourself a favour. We need to
spread this sh-- around."

Windsor DJ/producer Richie Hawtin, whose reputation among the techno
cognoscenti as the planet's best 'jock was subtly reinforced by his
position as the festival's closing act last night, actually did bring
his mom, Brenda Hawtin, to the festival.

"I wish those politicians would just go away," she said, alluding to
the recent crackdown on dance-music events in Ontario, as she manned
the merchandise booth for her son's label, Minus. "They forget that
they were young themselves once, too."

Richie Hawtin was himself a victim of Ontario's current "rave"
witchhunt last November, when a hometown release party for his Decks,
EFX And 909 mix disc wound up getting cancelled after interference
from nervous Windsor authorities.

The DEMF, which, as of yesterday afternoon, had no major security
issues to report beyond a partygoer who injured himself trying to
scale the fountain in Hart Plaza, couldn't have happened at a better
time, Hawtin said.

"In some ways, this is a nice bit of a middle finger to the officials
in Windsor," he added, a few hours before he took the stage last night.

"We'd actually had some preliminary ideas for a festival in Windsor,
but all that got thrown in the can after the sh-- went down in
November . . . Everything's happened at the right time for a reason.
We've been waiting 15 years for this, and it's happened at the right
time.

"It's the best thing I've seen in, like, 15 years. I was down there
with (Detroit techno luminaries) Stacey Pullen and Carl Craig the
other night while Kenny Larkin was spinning, and none of us ever
thought we'd be standing and listening to techno and looking up at the
Renaissance Centre."

For fans of pure, Detroit-style techno, the DEMF delivered no end of
thrills.

Saturday provided an early highlight when Detroit luminary Stacey
Pullen, who presciently dropped a snatch of Martin Luther King Jr.'s
famed "I have a dream" speech into his set, unexpectedly turned the
decks over to pal Kenny Larkin, giving the opening-day crowd an extra
helping of boomingly funky Motor City stylings augmented by a live
percussionist.

Philadelphia's crack live-hip-hop squad The Roots proved the biggest
draw of the weekend on Sunday night, very nearly packing the Detroit
Riverside Hart Plaza to capacity ("We were about maxed out," reported
DEMF producer Carol Marvin).

Critically hailed rapper Mos Def was a late show on the main stage
Saturday, but a striking urban-pastoral side venue on the river bank
overlooking Windsor commandeered by untested Gainesville, Fla., DJ Tim
Coy and Detroit-techno up-and-comer DJ Drew provided a slamming enough
helping of the "tuff stuff" that some partygoers (this one included)
got too distracted to care.

Coy, who lucked into a slot at the last minute, admitted he couldn't
have picked a better night to spin his first DJ set in front of a
major crowd.

"I'll have to calm down and let you know how I feel later on," he
said, after stepping off the stage. "But I love this city, and I love
the music that comes out of it."

Yesterday was the highlight for serious electronic-music heads,
though, boasting a lineup heavy with Minus label cohorts.

Clark Warner draped the sunstricken early-afternoon crowd in
glistening ambient and downtempo textures, while Dale "Theorem"
Lawrence cast driving-but-abstract old-school Detroit flavours out
over the pavement.

Techno originators Saunderson and May then delivered driving history
lessons and stunning displays of turntable skills for an appreciative
hometown audience (and superstar-DJ sightings such as Josh Wink and
London, Ont.'s John Acquaviva), before yielding the stage to Hawtin.

His presence, judging by the volume of Plastikman stickers, T-shirts
and tattoos in evidence (even the Detroit Public Works guy hauling
garbage from Hart Plaza had the logo on his chest), was perhaps the
most hotly anticipated of the weekend.

"It's scary and exhilarating at the same time," said Hawtin, an
outspoken devotee of the Detroit ancestors who were handing him the
reins at the DEMF's end. '

"It's a great honour. I'm just trying to figure out what I'm gonna
do."