If you find a good interview with Juan Atkins I think it will answer your question. I think even the notes accompanying his recent mix CD addressed this, if I am not mistaken?
Juan and co never said they invented electronic music per se, but what they did is transform European influences (and don't forget Kraftwerk cited James Brown as a huge influence) into something very radical and difererent - ie techno. What so often happens especially in America is that the media wants to credit today's electronic music - influenced by and based on techno and house - to New Order etc, effectively writing out its African American auteurs and the huge, huge transformative role they played. They turned electronic music into a culture, recontextualising it and investing it with a very different meaning. It's late and I have been harangued all day by promoters, but hopefully that makes sense. >>So do you think that the techno sound came just from Detroit? >>And that no kind of electronic music was going on in Europe at the >>same time??
