Belleville (Birthplace of Techno)
Our Take
Detroit techno didn’t start in Detroit. It started about 30 miles west, in the small lakeside town of Belleville, where three Black teenagers — Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson — met at Belleville High School and became inseparable around a shared obsession: the future, and what it should sound like.
They traded mixtapes, soaked up the Electrifying Mojo on late-night radio, and fell hard for Kraftwerk, Parliament, Prince, and Yellow Magic Orchestra. In their bedrooms and basements, on borrowed drum machines and synthesizers, they built a brand-new music out of those parts — cool, mechanical, and deeply soulful. The world came to call them the Belleville Three, and the genre they invented would fill dance floors from Berlin to Tokyo. It all traces back to a quiet Michigan town most people drive right past.