Techno was born far from the spotlight in Detroit, in the 1980s, in a city collapsing under economic pressure but overflowing with invisible creativity. In this landscape of abandoned factories and metallic echoes, three young American musicians: Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson, later known as the Belleville Three, crafted a new sound.
A sound shaped by futurism, by machines, by the dream of something better.
A sound that felt like rebellion and hope at the same time.

They probably didn’t expect it to leave the basements. Techno was intimate, experimental, a secret pulse shared among those who didn’t quite fit the world as it was. It belonged to the night: raw, strange, hypnotic. It became a refuge for people searching for a place with no judgement like queers, misfits, artists, kids who wanted to be someone else for a few hours. In the beginning, techno wasn’t a genre. It was a shelter.

I still remember the first time I heard it, how I felt something inside me unfolded. It was strange and familiar at the same time. For me, techno became a way to let everything spill out, not through words but through movement. When I dance, I stop performing. I stop apologizing. The beat holds me, and suddenly I’m allowed to exist exactly as I am.
That’s the soul of techno: a space where freedom is not negotiated but assumed.

How techno escaped the underground

Its rise into the public sphere didn’t happen overnight. It wasn’t a marketing plan. It was more like a slow migration from Detroit to Europe, from abandoned warehouses to cultural institutions, from secret raves to international festivals.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, techno travelled across the Atlantic and found an unexpected home in Berlin. After the fall of the Wall, the city was full of empty buildings: forgotten, full of potential, waiting for new meaning. Young people took them over and created the first European techno clubs. “Tresor”, built inside the vault of a former department store, became the beating heart of this movement. What Detroit invented, Berlin amplified.

From there, techno spread like a whispered truth: first Paris, then London, then Amsterdam. Illegal raves popped up in fields, tunnels, forests, parking lots. The music wasn’t just heard but it was lived. It became political. It challenged norms about nightlife, public space, and identity. Techno transformed from a marginalized subculture to a global cultural force.

The moment techno became “public”

By the early 2000s, techno had stepped into the mainstream. Festivals like “Love Parade” drew millions. Big artists collaborated with pop stars. Brands tried to commercialize the aesthetic that once belonged only to abandoned factories.
Some say techno lost something in that process like its mystery, its danger, its intimacy.

But I don’t believe techno ever really stopped being what it was.
Because at its core, techno is not defined by how many people listen to it, but why they listen. Its democratic rise simply revealed that millions of people needed the same thing:
a space without judgement,
a moment without pressure,
a rhythm that feels like freedom.

Even now, whether you’re in a tiny basement with twenty strangers or at a massive festival with thousands, the essence stays the same: you dance to reconnect with yourself. You dance to let go. You dance to remember you’re alive.

Techno didn’t just become public.
It became universal.
Because the desire to be free is universal.
And every time I step onto the dancefloor, whether I’m surrounded by friends or complete strangers, I feel the same truth rising through the bass:
I am allowed to exist. Fully.
Techno taught me that.

Cassandre Journoud

Sources:

Reynolds, Simon –  Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture (1998).
McLeod, Ken – “Detroit Techno: The Creation of a Cultural Underground.” Journal of Popular Music Studies (2001).
Tresor Records archives.
Interviews with the Belleville Three.