Berlin, Detroit, Race and Techno Music
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 28 June 2020
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Tom Smith sets out to research allegations of racism in Berlin’s club scene, he finds himself face to face with his own past in techno’s birthplace: Detroit. Visiting the music distributor Submerge, he considers the legacy of the pioneers Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, the influence of Afro-futurism and the work done in Berlin to popularise techno by figures including Kemal Kurum and Claudia Wahjudi. But the vibrant culture which seeks to be inclusive has been accused of whiteness and the Essay ends with a consideration of the experiences of clubbers depicted in the poetry of Michael Hyperion Küppers.
Tom Smith is a New Generation Thinker who lectures in German at the University of St Andrews.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who turn their research into radio.
Producer: Robyn Read
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.2 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:36.9 | Hello, I'm Shah Hadabari, and welcome to this episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast, |
| 0:42.2 | in which we'll hear an essay from one of the 2019 New Generation thinkers. |
| 0:47.0 | They are early career academics who work with BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council |
| 0:53.0 | on a scheme that turns their research into radio. |
| 0:56.7 | I was one of the first ten people chosen for the scheme nearly ten years ago. |
| 1:01.6 | In this year's essays, you'll hear topics ranging from cleaning, clean energy, crime and punishment, |
| 1:07.9 | and archaeological views of the earth, to moving large tracks of it to build |
| 1:11.9 | dams in Pakistan, the disappearing skills of Britain's textile industry and rethinking facial |
| 1:17.6 | disfigurement. Over to Tom Smith from the University of St Andrews and a piece called Berlin, |
| 1:23.3 | Detroit, race and techno music. It's late summer. I feel the heat coming up from the broken pavement beneath my feet. |
| 1:32.7 | The cicadas are humming in the bushes, a familiar sound from my childhood. |
| 1:38.1 | It's as if the old houses on this block are in a different world from the neighbouring parking lots |
| 1:43.1 | and auto repair shops. One large |
| 1:45.9 | villa with impressive gables, once in keeping with the street's name Grand Boulevard, now stands |
| 1:51.8 | dark and empty. Next door, another detached house where kids are playing on the porch. It's the |
| 1:58.3 | next building that brings me here to Detroit's new centre. You'd never guess from its |
| 2:03.7 | austere brick facade, but this is one of Detroit's most important and least conspicuous cultural |
| 2:09.8 | institutions. It's home to a music distributor called Submerge, which is at the heart of the |
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