A new generation of Black artists are reclaiming the roots of techno music

Back in the summer of 2016, one of the greatest dance music makers alive was raising big questions about how white bodies move to Black rhythms.

“How do you dance when we still swing from trees, when we still are murdered in front of our loved ones, murdered while subdued and harmless?” Theo Parrish, the Detroit-based producer and DJ, asked on social media.

“How do you dance when our very image as a people is used to manipulate sympathy for a system of belief that wants you and your children to be dead or in jail? You better. You better listen with your body, you better play from your heart. It was a preference before, but now it’s essential.”

Then Parrish seemed to unveil the meaning of dance music culture itself: “Escapism has always been an adjective used to describe the dance. That’s an outsider’s view. Solidarity is what it really offers.”

Four years later – with our nightclubs emptied and our streets filled with protesters rejecting the lethal racism of American police – it’s a good time for citizens of the nightlife to think about that offer of solidarity. Black artists like Parrish are generous to make it. White listeners should commit to it completely. Because in the summer of 2020, loving Black music is not the same thing as loving Black people.

When was it ever? Even in the small-hours reverie of clubland – where Black disco, techno and house music constantly improve the air – we’re still living in an unjust world where Black life needs to be defended with our activism, our advocacy, our money, our vote and more. The dance floor can be a place where solidarity begins. It shouldn’t be where it ends.

Holding these ideas in the front of your brainspace shouldn’t be too difficult before, during or after listening to “HOA010,” the monumental new compilation album on HAUS of ALTR, a New York dance label committed to young, Black producers and their righteous tomorrow-visions.

Released on Juneteenth, “HOA010” has 27 exhilarating tracks and some galvanizing liner notes: “In these trying times, we come together to stake claim on the roots of techno and its potential future.”

Techno’s roots can be traced back to the Black community that originally congregated around the music in Detroit in the 1980s, but you’d hardly know it looking at today’s biggest dance festivals, where white DJs dominate the lineups, playing for massive crowds and ungodly paychecks.

MoMA Ready wants that to change. It’s impossible to miss the polyglot producer at the center of “HOA010,” both figuratively and literally – he co-founded HAUS of ALTR in 2018, and the compilation is sequenced alphabetically by artist. His music is dizzying in its multidirectionality, but its binding intensity supports his commitment to communal rhythm as a life-and-death thing.

“You’re saving lives and giving context to people’s lives by being honest about your art,” he told Love Injection last year, “in a world where we all face existential crises daily.”

On “HOA010,” the music unspools like a roll call, but the ABC sequence feels dynamic and right on. The itchy twitch of Akua’s “Lucid Dreams” pivots into the elegant pummel of Amal’s “Psychopass.” The mesmerizing thrum of DJ Nativesun’s “Brainwash Bop” slides into the hyperventilating commotion of DJ Swisha’s “New Luv.”

It all happens so fast and unflinchingly, and if you think of rhythm as a metaphor for human progress, the music’s fleet tempos begin to surge with meaning. As for the future of techno itself, it’s already coming fast.

Fourteen days after the drop of “HOA010,” HAUS of ALTR released a sequel compilation, “HOA011,” crammed with equally dazzling sounds and an intensified mission statement: “Back once again, we assume the role of Vanguard in the war against white supremacy in electronic music.”