4 ms·

In the fifties and sixties every school child in Detroit got musical instruction. They loaned me a violin and my sister learned the flute. There was a music c

by rmason 5y ago

In the fifties and sixties every school child in Detroit got musical instruction. They loaned me a violin and my sister learned the flute. There was a music company downtown that would sell your parents used instruments on a payment plan. Out of all that came Motown, a strong rock scene (Alice Cooper, Bob Seger, Ted Nugent and more) and the birth of electronic music. Not to mention scores of excellent session musicians as well as a vibrant club scene. By the seventies the music program was cut due to budget concerns and that downtown music store went out of business. Could it happens again? Detroit just announced a program to give every teenager a remanufactured laptop and subsidized Internet. There would be more if the schools restarted music instruction but poor kids can be pretty resourceful;<). https://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2020/04/23/detroit-schools-laptops-free-internet/3005834001/ https://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2020/04/23/detroi...

wolverine876 5y ago
I didn't know that about music education in Detroit; that's great and an important story. > poor kids can be pretty resourceful They are, in fact, like every other kid! > Out of all that came Motown, a strong rock scene (Alice Cooper, Bob Seger, Ted Nugent and more) and the birth of electronic music. And punk (MC5, Iggy Pop & the Stooges) and funkadelic (George Clinton, etc.). Also, to nitpick, it was the birth of techno, not electronic music.
- breakfastduck 5y ago
  Not even nitpicking - someone reading the original comment who doesn't know about music history would read that and think the USA created electronic music which is so unbelievably far from correct it's cringeworthy.
  - cromka 5y ago
    US created disco (NYC), funk (NOLA), house (Chicago) and, simultaneously with Germany, techno (Detroit). US is also where many very crucial synthesizers were built, especially Moog (the rest of them came mostly from Japan). I don't think it's far fetched to say that US has been a birthplace of what we now know as electronic music. PS. Saying this as an European, into electronic music of all genres since 20 years.
    - breakfastduck 5y ago
      Electronic music was being experimented with as early as the 40s in Europe. Please, you're talking nonsense.
  - rmason 5y ago
    Go ahead be my guest and nitpick ;<). Obviously I meant techno not electronic music. I am a fan of Kraftwerk and I believe they are one of many German electronic music bands.
- desine 5y ago
  I may be mistaken, but as a synth head, the stories I heard placed the origins of Techno, House, and the birth of Electronic Dance Musicin the decline the post Motown / Rock / Disco era. Early drum machines and rhythm machines, including the Roland TB-303 and TR-808 were not well regarded in the studio for music that was performed via traditional instruments. Many studios, producers, and musicians purchased these state of the art devices for several hundreds of dollars (equivalent to thousands, today), then sold them very cheaply to pawn shops and secondhand stores in cities, because few musicians liked they way they sounded. It was then the youths who picked these up cheaply that started using them on their own right, and embracing their untraditional sound. I'm sure the musical education was a big factor, but I wanted to point out this other part of the story - it relates well to TFA. Most of us in the first world would scoff at using a 10" netbook with 1 GB of RAM, even if it were free. Similarly many musicians scoffed at using drum machine, even if were free compared to a costly studio drummer.
- rmason 5y ago
  You are correct about techno. I didn't mention MC5 (one of my all time favorites) because only boomers know them. Iggy Pop is an Ann Arbor kid though he came to fame at Detroit clubs.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    What do you think about the idea of the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges being the inventors of punk rock?
smoldesu 5y ago
I believe they still run programs like this in the richer parts of Michigan. I've been out of the Michigan educational system for a few years now, but I think Howell and Albion still loan instruments. It's pretty heartbreaking that Detroit is struggling to pay contractors to remove mold from the classroom when 100 miles away they're giving away musical instruments.
52-6F-62 5y ago
And because of Motown you have Neil Young, the Blues Brothers films, Dave Chapelle's unflappable impressions of Rick James, Rodriguez (kind of?), the list goes on!
samatman 5y ago
Just gotta throw this out there: Bob Seger went to the same high school as I did (and Iggy Pop), and that high school is in Ann Arbor. Which also had quality music instruction at all levels of education, at least through the 90s, and had Detroit just down I-94 for somewhere to go and become a pro at it.
- rmason 5y ago
  Both Bob Seger and Iggy Pop became famous performing at the famous Grande Ballroom. Along with Ted Nugent, the MC5, Alice Cooper and many, many more. The Grande like many Detroit buildings is an absolute wreck. Any other city would have led restoration efforts of this famous Rock temple before now but the city lacks funds and it's in the worst area of the city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_Ballroom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_Ballroom
  - samatman 5y ago
    As I said, having Detroit as a place to go pro was a big plus. I just had to give proper credit to my alma mater for those two! For that matter I went to two high schools, and shared classes at the other one with Andrew WK, so Ann Arbor is still turning out rock gods. The Ilitch family restored the Fox Theatre in the 80s, so it's not impossible to imagine the right philanthropist doing the same for the Grande Ballroom. Fox is right downtown, however, and as you indicated, Grande Ballroom is... not.
    - redis_mlc 5y ago
      The Ilitch family (Little Caesars pizza, etc.) apparently have their HQ in the Fox Theatre. They've successfully helped Detroit by opportunistically (ie. vultures) in buying distressed properties and sports teams/stadiums. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilitch_Holdings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilitch_Holdings
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> and the birth of electronic music. even with the amended version (s/electronic/techno/), this still needs attention ... subthread here, from about a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27093490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27093490
dehrmann 5y ago
I have no idea how big of a difference this made. It's not like there are violins or flutes in those genres, and a large problem with kids learning orchestra instruments is they're not very useful for playing the music the kids are listening to, so they're somewhat uninspiring.

by rmason 5y ago

wolverine876 5y ago

I didn't know that about music education in Detroit; that's great and an important story. > poor kids can be pretty resourceful They are, in fact, like every other kid! > Out of all that came Motown, a strong rock scene (Alice Cooper, Bob Seger, Ted Nugent and more) and the birth of electronic music. And punk (MC5, Iggy Pop & the Stooges) and funkadelic (George Clinton, etc.). Also, to nitpick, it was the birth of techno, not electronic music.

breakfastduck 5y ago
Not even nitpicking - someone reading the original comment who doesn't know about music history would read that and think the USA created electronic music which is so unbelievably far from correct it's cringeworthy.
- cromka 5y ago
  US created disco (NYC), funk (NOLA), house (Chicago) and, simultaneously with Germany, techno (Detroit). US is also where many very crucial synthesizers were built, especially Moog (the rest of them came mostly from Japan). I don't think it's far fetched to say that US has been a birthplace of what we now know as electronic music. PS. Saying this as an European, into electronic music of all genres since 20 years.
  - breakfastduck 5y ago
    Electronic music was being experimented with as early as the 40s in Europe. Please, you're talking nonsense.
- rmason 5y ago
  Go ahead be my guest and nitpick ;<). Obviously I meant techno not electronic music. I am a fan of Kraftwerk and I believe they are one of many German electronic music bands.
desine 5y ago
I may be mistaken, but as a synth head, the stories I heard placed the origins of Techno, House, and the birth of Electronic Dance Musicin the decline the post Motown / Rock / Disco era. Early drum machines and rhythm machines, including the Roland TB-303 and TR-808 were not well regarded in the studio for music that was performed via traditional instruments. Many studios, producers, and musicians purchased these state of the art devices for several hundreds of dollars (equivalent to thousands, today), then sold them very cheaply to pawn shops and secondhand stores in cities, because few musicians liked they way they sounded. It was then the youths who picked these up cheaply that started using them on their own right, and embracing their untraditional sound. I'm sure the musical education was a big factor, but I wanted to point out this other part of the story - it relates well to TFA. Most of us in the first world would scoff at using a 10" netbook with 1 GB of RAM, even if it were free. Similarly many musicians scoffed at using drum machine, even if were free compared to a costly studio drummer.
rmason 5y ago
You are correct about techno. I didn't mention MC5 (one of my all time favorites) because only boomers know them. Iggy Pop is an Ann Arbor kid though he came to fame at Detroit clubs.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  What do you think about the idea of the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges being the inventors of punk rock?

smoldesu 5y ago

I believe they still run programs like this in the richer parts of Michigan. I've been out of the Michigan educational system for a few years now, but I think Howell and Albion still loan instruments. It's pretty heartbreaking that Detroit is struggling to pay contractors to remove mold from the classroom when 100 miles away they're giving away musical instruments.

52-6F-62 5y ago

And because of Motown you have Neil Young, the Blues Brothers films, Dave Chapelle's unflappable impressions of Rick James, Rodriguez (kind of?), the list goes on!

samatman 5y ago

Just gotta throw this out there: Bob Seger went to the same high school as I did (and Iggy Pop), and that high school is in Ann Arbor. Which also had quality music instruction at all levels of education, at least through the 90s, and had Detroit just down I-94 for somewhere to go and become a pro at it.

rmason 5y ago
Both Bob Seger and Iggy Pop became famous performing at the famous Grande Ballroom. Along with Ted Nugent, the MC5, Alice Cooper and many, many more. The Grande like many Detroit buildings is an absolute wreck. Any other city would have led restoration efforts of this famous Rock temple before now but the city lacks funds and it's in the worst area of the city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_Ballroom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_Ballroom
- samatman 5y ago
  As I said, having Detroit as a place to go pro was a big plus. I just had to give proper credit to my alma mater for those two! For that matter I went to two high schools, and shared classes at the other one with Andrew WK, so Ann Arbor is still turning out rock gods. The Ilitch family restored the Fox Theatre in the 80s, so it's not impossible to imagine the right philanthropist doing the same for the Grande Ballroom. Fox is right downtown, however, and as you indicated, Grande Ballroom is... not.
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    The Ilitch family (Little Caesars pizza, etc.) apparently have their HQ in the Fox Theatre. They've successfully helped Detroit by opportunistically (ie. vultures) in buying distressed properties and sports teams/stadiums. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilitch_Holdings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilitch_Holdings

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

> and the birth of electronic music. even with the amended version (s/electronic/techno/), this still needs attention ... subthread here, from about a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27093490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27093490

dehrmann 5y ago

I have no idea how big of a difference this made. It's not like there are violins or flutes in those genres, and a large problem with kids learning orchestra instruments is they're not very useful for playing the music the kids are listening to, so they're somewhat uninspiring.