Techno music pioneers and Big Sean hit red carpet for Detroit documentary premiere

A film 12 years in the making, capturing a Detroit music story that took root more than four decades ago, got its long-awaited hometown premiere Thursday night.

The screening of “God Said Give ‘Em Drum Machines,” the first major documentary chronicling the birth of techno music in Detroit, drew a host of the film’s key figures — along with Detroit-raised hip-hop star Big Sean — for a red-carpet event at the Michigan Science Center.

Techno DJ-producers Juan Atkins, Blake Baxter, Santonio Echols, Eddie Fowlkes and Kevin Saunderson were among those on hand Thursday — making up five of the vaunted “Techno Six,” along with Derrick May, who serve as the film’s narrative backbone.

“I’m just happy these superheroes are getting their just due and the attention they deserve, because (techno) has influenced the whole world,” Big Sean said ahead of the screening.

The documentary premiere, presented by the Freep Film Festival, was the kickoff to the rapper’s DON Weekend, the annual slate of community activities across the city sponsored by his Sean Anderson Foundation. This year’s event will include a Friday reception and awards ceremony along with a Saturday block party in partnership with the Boys & Girls Club of Southeastern Michigan.

“God Said …” captures the story of Detroit’s early techno principals — young Black artists in the ‘80s who pioneered the futuristic, soul-sparked sound that helped foment a worldwide electronic dance music revolution. Today, those artists still play leading roles in techno culture, carriers of an authentic musical torch, though in the wider EDM realm, their names are often eclipsed by the platinum-selling, Vegas-headlining, frequently European-based acts who followed in their paths.

More:Lil Nas X moves Detroit shows from Fillmore to Fox Theatre; new tickets on sale now

More:DSO touts upcoming season with a string trio and a train ride down Woodward

Big Sean, who watched the film alongside his mom and foundation director, Myra Anderson, was clearly taken by the saga and music that played out on the screen. The 34-year-old said afterward he found the film inspiring, and he wants to dig deeper to learn more.

In an enthusiastic exchange with Atkins after the screening, Big Sean exchanged phone numbers with the 59-year-old techno maestro, who's widely regarded as the music’s most important early architect. “I’ve got some ideas,” Big Sean told him.

If a Big Sean-Juan Atkins collaboration indeed comes to be, it started Thursday night. For Atkins, that would check an important career box: “I’ve been looking for the right rapper for a project forever,” he told the Free Press.

“God Said Give ‘Em Drum Machines,” directed by Detroiter Kristian Hill and generously packed with the music it’s documenting, had its world premiere in June at New York’s Tribeca Festival.

Still, the Detroit premiere was bound to have its own special resonance, and Thursday was “a very emotional night," said Hill, who finally got to reveal a film that scraped through its early years as a crowdfunded passion project before major funding eventually arrived.

“I can’t tell you how many nights we sat in that editing bay and talked about this moment,” Hill told the audience ahead of the premiere, calling the film a “love letter to our city.”

For the hometown crowd watching the film unfold, there were multiple applause points, including the on-screen appearance of various familiar techno characters, many of them in the theater watching, along with the sight of crucial characters such as WJLB-FM disc jockey Electrifyin’ Mojo and pre-techno club DJ Ken Collier. Poignant cheers erupted at footage of late techno DJ Mike Huckaby, whose colorful account of the genre’s origins inspired the documentary’s title.

There was delighted applause at clips from the Detroit TV program “The Scene” — full of eye-catching ‘80s fashion and dance moves — and at musically triumphant moments such as Derrick May’s 2015 collaboration with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The 90-minute film got a rousing ovation at its conclusion.

There were laugh moments for the crowd, too, including contemptuous snorts at a recent ABC News clip that called French producer David Guetta, a maker of 21^st century hits, “the godfather of electronic music.”

That theme — the overshadowing of techno’s Black Detroit creators by the mainstream electronic-music stars who came in their wake — is an undercurrent of the doc. Richie Hawtin, the white, Windsor-bred DJ who immersed himself in Detroit’s techno scene before breaking out to global success, is one focal point, though he's ultimately portrayed as credible and well-meaning.

“God Said …” builds its case by connecting techno to its hometown roots of Motown, jazz and industrial automation, which led to a distinctly Detroit sound that rose simultaneously with hip-hop in New York and house music in Chicago, each of them driven by the emergence of consumer-grade synthesizers and drum machines at the turn of the ‘80s.

The film threads a few tricky needles, romanticizing techno music and its creators without coming off wide-eyed, while approaching the racial topic with concern but not heavy-handedness. Dramatic spice comes from the personality conflicts and internecine squabbles within the tight-knit Detroit scene, particularly when techno gets its lucrative European foothold in the late ‘80s.

While the documentary largely zeroes in on the ‘80s and ‘90s, it does acknowledge a techno-world development that cropped up during production: Late in the film, title cards note that sexual-misconduct allegations were leveled at May in 2020, adding that no charges have been filed. (Of the six techno pioneers who serve as the movie’s leading men, May was the only one not present at Thursday’s premiere. He told the Free Press earlier this week he was already scheduled to be out of state attending to a family matter.)

Detroit’s techno history isn’t exactly an untold story; it has been comprehensively chronicled in books, magazines and newspapers through the decades. But “God Said Give ‘Em Drum Machines” is the first time it has been presented in full-length documentary form, with rare retro footage and a lively soundtrack that gets to do much of the storytelling.

The film is scheduled to play several international film festivals in coming months, and producer Jennifer Washington said wider distribution — including streaming — is in the works.

She hopes the documentary will help younger Detroiters absorb a piece of their musical inheritance that often has been overlooked.

“Kids need to be taught the truth about what kind of creative community we have here, and our potential as Detroiters and Black people,” Washington said Thursday. There’s a national stake too, she said: “This story is too important for Americans not to know about it.”

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Techno pioneers, Big Sean hit red carpet for Detroit film premiere