Episode 3 explores how affordable electronic Episode 3 explores how affordable electronic instruments like the Roland TB-303 and TR-606 empowered Detroit’s Black youth to invent techno. It highlights the role of experimentation, Afrofuturism, and cultural resistance, framing techno as a unique sound shaped by innovation, struggle, and speculative imagination.

Host: Julian Chambliss. Featured Voices: Stacey “Hotwaxx” Hale, Reynaldo Anderson, Erik Steinskog, John Collins, Mike Banks, Thomas Sugrue, Carl Craig, Ytasha Womack, Tobias c. van Veen, Omar Meftah, Ingrid Lafleur.

Presented by WKAR Public Media in partnership with MSU Museum at Michigan State University.
Supported in part by MSU Federal Credit Union.

Includes:

A Brief Story of the Roland TB-303 Bassline Synthesizer, 2022, – Johnny Morgan Synth Dreams

Amp Fiddler on Working With George Clinton, Jay Dee and Maxwell | Red Bull Music Academy, 2017.

Julian C. Chambliss and Tobias C Van Veen, “Interview of Afrofuturist Sound Scholar Tobias C. Van Veen,” Michigan State University Library, G. Robert Vincent Voice Library Collection: Voices of the Black Imaginary, June 2021.

Julian C. Chambliss, “Interview of Erik Steinskog of the University of Copenhagen,” Michigan State University Library, G. Robert Vincent Voice Library Collection: Voices of the Black Imaginary, October 24, 2020.

instruments like the Roland TB-303 and TR-606 empowered Detroit’s Black youth to invent techno.