Is Detroit Techno Too Big to Be Cool?

Detroit — The city’s landmark electronic music festival, Movement, kicked off this weekend in Detroit’s Hart Plaza. Spanning the three days of Memorial Day weekend, and well into the night, it’s always an iconic moment for the birthplace of techno.

Movement’s increasing popularity stokes the same fears of cultural dilution you hear from the anti-development crowd. Is Detroit’s techno scene becoming more commodified?

In the end, the worry is wasted energy. Techno is one of modern Detroit’s greatest cultural exports, and we shouldn’t worry too much that the vibes will change.

When you hear about Detroit’s exports, more often you think of the heyday of automobile production, when America’s manufacturing prowess was at its peak. Modern Detroit, however, is known more on a global scale for techno, a music phenomenon with festivals spanning the globe.

In that regard, techno is already commodified. It’s an international product now. The horse has left the barn. This isn’t the warehouse show era anymore. But the popularity exists for a reason, and it doesn’t make it any less cool.

Movement is a homecoming of sorts for the genre. It draws in a crowd of over 100,000 people over the course of the weekend, from local diehards to globetrotting festival junkies.

Walking into Movement is a sensory assault on every level. You feel the pounding bass from two blocks away, and it slowly builds the closer you get to the main stages. Colorful lights, visible even in the daytime, flash and whirl into the sky. Crowds of people flow down the street in great streams.

Weed and tobacco smoke fill the air, cigarettes and joints competing for the dominant aroma. The smell of nicotine vapes is constant, sickly sweet. Dab pens are the most pungent, that sharp industrial smell of burnt resin and metal.

It’s all permitted, of course, at an open-air festival. Cigs, joints, and vapes are sold onsite. A few Michigan dispensaries even have their own booths. There are crazier options too, including IV hydration, a tent where nurses shoot you up with intravenous vitamins and electrolytes.

That’s just the legal stuff, too. I didn’t ask around, but the techno scene is well known for stimulant use, things like meth, adderall, and MDMA. How else are you supposed to dance all night until 8 a.m.?

You have to keep your wits about you, even when relatively sober, or else you’ll find yourself wondering why the random beautiful girl you just met is so intensely interested in you. Sorry to break it to you, pal, but she doesn’t really like you—she’s just on molly.

A few women were dancing with signs advertising free boxes of Narcan, the spray that treats opioid overdoses. Surprising, because who takes opioids for a techno festival? I didn’t see anyone nodding off, fent folding on the festival grounds—the fentanyl smokers were all a few blocks over, loitering in empty doorways.

There are a few bars scattered around, of course, including a big tent in the VIP area with spiked red bulls, seltzers, liquor, and beer. Alcohol feels almost antiquated compared to the litany of other substances.

Food is available, but the heaviness of eating clashes with the vibe of stimulant-fueled gyrations. The most popular item were these plastic boxes of noodles, fried up in a fiery wok right off the center of Hart Plaza.

The other dominant scent? Human body odor, especially in the underground stages. It’s a well-known trope of the Berlin techno scene that wearing deodorant will get you turned away at the door of the more exclusive clubs.

Body odor is a fashion accessory at Movement as well. You won’t smell much perfume here. Don’t bother with deodorant that you’ll just sweat through anyways, that’s the motto.

The styles and fashion sense at Movement are otherwise extremely eclectic, for both men and women.

Sure, there’s the all-black fits. The standard techno uniform that signals that you actually care a lot about looking like you don’t care.

From there, it runs the gamut. Some people in jeans and T-shirts, others looking like they just stepped off of a spaceship. Crazy sequined cloaks, giant heeled black boots, fishnet bodysuits, and thongs. One dude at the media check-in had a piece of jewelry on his face, a shiny silver jawbone around his lower jaw.

Many guys go shirtless, but in two distinct demographics. The shirtless straight guys are just bodybuilder bros, sometimes with a hat on. The shirtless gay guys wear leather harnesses, cross-body bags, tight shorts, earrings. Easy to tell apart.

The style vibe matches the overall vibe of the festival, which really is that anything goes, so long as no one gets hurt. It’s a cultural exercise in pushing the limits of safetyism. How much sensory overload can we indulge in without someone accidentally smashing their face into the pavement?

Security did their job well, herding the crowds around, keeping the stairs unblocked by bystanders so people could enter and egress. One guarded the top of the pyramid, and only let me up there when I flashed my media pass. He said people try to climb the top, otherwise, and it was his job to stop them.

The music is the main draw, of course, and it’s truly a world-class festival in that regard. The lineup was studded with real heavy hitters. Detroit is the birthplace of techno, after all.

Movement has multiple stages ringing around, and even underneath Hart Plaza. The main stage is in the amphitheater, where the headliners play a mix of more broadly popular techno and deep house tracks.

The pyramid stage tends more EDM-esque, with some dubstep throw backs for the oldhead millennials. The waterfront stage felt more groovy, more of a soul vibe, less bass and more deep tunes to dance around the grass to. The stage to take your friend who’s peaking on acid and feeling overwhelmed.

The underground stage is the most Detroit, by far. A concrete dungeon for punishing bass and hard techno cuts, reverberating off the concrete so loudly that your entire body shakes. A dark mass of bodies swaying with sounds so loud they can’t be captured on video.

Blawan’s underground set on Saturday night ripped. It felt like it might tear the roof down. Mija played some more upbeat house there Monday afternoon, a delightfully unusual pairing for the stage. KI/KI closed it out with a high intensity techno pop set to a packed crowd.

Earplugs are practically mandatory at the underground if you want to hear the next day. Most festival goers who know what they’re doing wear them around the whole day. If you go to shows like this frequently, better to play the long game and protect your hearing.

Some locals told me that the underground is the real Detroit stage, the closest thing to the local warehouse scene that really gave Detroit techno its come up.

A few complained the main stage vibes on Sunday were “too house,” with not enough of the hard techno Detroit is known for. They worry that the scene is changing, watering itself down to appeal to a broader crowd. They assured me that Monday’s lineup was the real techno day, the day for the locals.

Afterparties, known as “afters” are a big draw over the weekend as well. Practically every bar and venue in the city has multiple events listed, some lasting until 8 a.m.

Most sell tickets, and if you’re serious about hitting a particular venue, you better get them beforehand. Otherwise, you’ll be price gouged at the door. SPKRBOX, a popular little coffee shop by day and techno bar by night, was charging $60 at the door just for entry.

The big venues, the Magic Stick and the Majestic, all have their own afterparty events, of course. The afters go all the way out to Corktown, where UFO Bar and Corktown Tavern had their own post-Movement events.

Even the little Corktown Tavern had three separate DJs, one at the front, another in the backyard, and a third on the second floor. A real local crowd milled about, everyone seeming to know each other. This is where the blue collar guys in cowboy boots listen to techno, a uniquely Detroit thing.

Detroit is a local town, and Detroiters are a loyal bunch. Movement brings an international crowd of performers and attendees alike. Some are concerned that Detroit techno has become too big, that it risks drowning out the local scene altogether.

That’s the wrong way to look at it, though. The better way is to recognize techno as Detroit’s greatest cultural draw, a decades-long music phenomenon with global appeal that rightfully draws in crowds to see it here where it began.

Movement may be an international thing at this point, but the afters are alive and well, and festival attendees naturally filter out into the night to experience more down-to-earth affairs. That’s where largely unknown Detroit DJs spin until the early morning in dark rooms, random bars, backrooms, yards, wherever they can find.

This is the most unique big weekend that downtown Detroit has, otherwise confined to the major sports teams and the auto show. Techno is uniquely Detroit, and Detroit has rightfully embraced it as its own. Yet downtown development and growing popularity brings fears of gentrification, of cultural dilution, to the local crowd.

They need not fear, so long as they keep showing up and delivering the vibe that the city’s known for. Just crank the bass so loud that the casuals get filtered out. Otherwise, embrace the crowds and popularity. If modern Detroit should be known for anything, let it be this.