Kevin Saunderson on Pioneering Detroit Techno and Its Legacy | Living for the City FULL Interview
About this episode
Kevin Saunderson discusses his journey in creating Detroit techno and its lasting impact on music.
Kevin Saunderson is one of the Belleville Three, the teenagers from suburban Michigan who invented Detroit techno, the architect behind Inner City, and one of the most influential catalogs in electronic music history. This is his full conversation with host Hanif Abdurraqib. In this interview, Kevin traces his path from New York to Inkster to Belleville, where he met Derrick May and eventually Juan Atkins, and where there was nothing to do but make music. He talks about the early days at the Music Institute, driving records to Chicago to get them played alongside house music, and the night at Heaven in London when he first heard Big Fun played for a crowd that rushed the dance floor. He breaks down the origin of the word techno, why his sound went toward melody and vocals when the others went abstract, and how the Reese Bass ended up shaping not just techno but hip hop without most people knowing it. Kevin also reflects on the racism he encountered in Belleville, the segregation that made it harder to break in America than in Europe, and what it meant to watch the city of Detroit finally embrace what he helped build decades after he built it. This one is about invention…
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