Quote Originally Posted by SlavikSvensk View Post
the detroit fellas were influenced by a broader range of european electronic dance music than most people realize. and there's a good argument that 1990s techno has as much to do with dark, minimalist 1980s chicago house as the relatively sunnier and jazzier 1980s detroit techno.

but the fact is that the detroit guys were the ones who made music called techno, and from which later techno directly descends. sure there are other antecedents, some perhaps as important for later developments in techno, but if you want to trace the history of "techno music," you have to look at what the term was first used to describe. that's the direct lineage, with other influences coming into play, and shaping the trajectory of that lineage at various points.
The terms was applied to something that already existed. So yes there are other antecedents. Later techno does not entirely descend from Detroit, it descends from a greater history than just detroit.
This is the entire point.
If we only look at was used to first describe techno, then hardly any techno from the last 15 years can be called techno.
The word techno has been used by many many people to give a name to something that is transient, by it`s own nature for it to capture the zeitgesit, what defines it, will always be, and always has been, hard to define itself.

It`s like trying to define industrial (music). The word was used to give name to a type of music being made by a group of loose associates by an artist called Monte Cazzazza.
However, it didn`t really define anything as such and soon more music came to be made using this name, music that really didn`t sound like the music from this small group, as everyone needed a word to describe this rebellion against current norms and preconceptions, despite the fact that the music being made by all these people wasn`t really that related in musical terms.
Now what people refer to as industrial bares absolutely no resemblence and hardly any relation to what Cazzazza was describing waaaay back at the end of the 70`s.

A name was given to something that existed already. And techno is pretty much the same.
The main difference being that in techno there are bigger egos claiming to be inventors of it.