Detroit is a city synonymous with music history, cultural innovation and the struggle to be heard. Theo Parrish was born in Washington DC, grew up in Chicago, and studied in Kansas City, before settling in post-industrial Detroit. Today the Motor City identifies Parrish as its own. The charismatic artist is responsible for a wealth of classic records – many disseminated via his imprint, Sound Signature. As a DJ, Parrish is magic, embracing the spectrum of soul – from the deepest sounds of Africa to jazz, R&B and funk to disco, house and techno. There are countless DJs who claim to be eclectic, Parrish delivers. Anyone who has ever encountered his mix-CDs will know. Parrish loves music, and loves it deeply. Theo cares not for tags but understands that most perceive him as a ‘dance music’ artist. He is intent on challenging that very concept. “In my head everything is dance music – it has the potential to be – it’s all about context,” he declares.
Parrish developed his musical sensibilities in Chi-town – as with his peers, he tuned into the city’s mixshows. Theo was already DJing – and producing – in his early teens and wanted to be like Farley Jackmaster Funk, Lil’ Louis or Ron Hardy. It was at 13 when Theo experienced the first of many musical epiphanies which he describes with characteristically anecdotal flair. He began to listen in a new way – “listening to play” – and tap into the art of sound. Parrish heard Public Enemy and NWA and connected with the new politically-conscious hip-hop even if he didn’t spin it.
After graduating from high school, Parrish headed to Kansas City on a scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute, where he enrolled in Fine Arts. Theo started studying sculpture but turned his attention to the sonic side – sound sculpture. The Fine Arts course at KCAI offered a radical first year program, Foundations (Theo dubs it an “art boot camp”), in which students experimented with divergent artforms in workshops before deciding on a major. “No matter what artist you think you are when you go in there, you’re absolutely and positively stripped of your little artist ego.” Theo was drawn towards sculpture. “I went to the sculpture department and I was the only Black person in the department and I found it to be extremely racist in the sculpture department and, because of that, the instructor was actually pretty racist to me as well, so I decided to leave the department and complain to the administration,” he says.
Parrish had enjoyed the installation aspect of his studies which led him to explore sound sculpture. 
But Parrish was also exposed to fresh ideas outside of study. He heard new music. The college kids were into alternative – The Cure, Morrissey, Nine Inch Nails. Theo discovered the hardcore band Bad Brains – and attended a concert by band member HR. “I saw him live and it was the first concert I’ve ever went to and I was expecting hardcore and this guy started playing this dub-reggae!” The music culture in Kansas City, too, was a revelation – and Theo played on the local circuit. He’d DJ alongside Bronx transplant – and hip-hop DJ – Jock Max. The New Yorker introduced Theo to “real true hip-hop.” “The promoters in town would book us together – there was no division between a hip-hop crowd and a house crowd and a so-and-so crowd, it was just everybody went out dancing.”
Parrish left Kansas inspired. “A lot of things happened in Kansas City that sent me in a multitude of musical directions – listening-wise and collection-wise and playing-wise – as a result. A lot of stuff I didn’t have the balls to play.”
In 1994 Parrish travelled to Detroit. Theo was unsure what he wanted to do next. His parents had relocated from Chicago to Detroit while he was in his last year of high school. Theo’s mother suggested he stay. “It was just a simple decision – I went and stayed in my mother’s basement with the idea of becoming a substitute teacher for a while,” he laughs.
Parrish was cognizant of what was happening in The D from college vacations but, once entrenched, he paid more attention. Theo visited Buy Right Music – Detroit’s leading house store – to vibe with Kenny Dixon Jr (aka Moodymann) and Rick Wilhite, who were working there. “I would play them the old edits from Chicago and they were like, ‘Who’s this kid coming here? Who is this dude?’ My age kind of set a little difference between a lot of the guys there, ‘cause a lot of those people in Detroit were like anywhere from seven to 10 years older than me – and here’s this young guy coming in playing stuff that these older cats are done playing, they’re over, and they’re like, ‘Who are you? What you young guy know ‘bout all that? You on ‘bout that? You’re supposed to be listening to 2Pac or something!’ And so that was the kind of idea that I shocked people with, but they just really didn’t know what I could do – or anything like that. I’m just some guy who liked the music like everybody else.”
Parrish had always believed that there was not much to differentiate the dance from Chicago and Detroit, but he changed his mind. “The distinction that I was able to really pick up on was that Detroit was more about a melody, a song, and Chicago’s more about an energy in a drum track and a feel – and that distinction is what I started to see – and in my own productions I started to see that I became more interested in chord arrangements as opposed to just the beat track or the sample or something like that.”
Parrish made his mark in the city’s underground at a stage when Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson and Carl Craig were representing Detroit’s high-tech soul in Europe and beyond. Parrish established Sound Signature with an ethos spiritual, cerebral and poetic. He emerged as part of a third wave who further expanded the Detroit electronic cause. Theo formed the Three Chairs with Kenny Dixon Jr, Rick Wilhite and Marcellus Pittman, generating a new 313 fable to rival that of UR.
Of late Parrish has been working on a bold project entitled The Rotating Assembly.
It’s essentially several groups within one – different configurations will tour. Parrish has collaborated with local producers, musicians and vocalists. Theo, big on automobiles, borrowed the collective’s name from the engine’s inner workings. 
As for where he himself is moving, Theo is uncertain. “That’s a hard question to figure out. I mean, it’s hard to know what you’re coming across, why you’re coming across it. It’s a certain distance that you have to have from the point that you discover something to really be able to see the progress you’ve made – and looking back is something I really try not to do. I always kinda look at it like, ‘Why are people so into what I do now? This is hardly my best work. I’ve only begun.’ It’s interesting to me – a lot of people say to me, ‘Well, you’ve been in the game for a while.’ In the game? Huh? I’m just learning how to put together a song! I think that’s pretty funny. But I don’t really know what direction… I know what I wanna do – and it’s happening, ‘cause I know consciously I really don’t believe in the rules and the divisions between this kind of music and that kind of music. I understand we need these monickers and these terms to be able to market and talk about the music, however, I would like to see a shift from it being about the terms and everything relating to other artists in the terms as opposed to each artist as an artist in their own right.”
Theo feels that music journalists have betrayed underground artists – especially in dance – which possibly explains why he has granted select interviews. Parrish (rightfully) believes that the interviewers should demonstrate musical knowledge, and an affinity with artists, acting as a conduit. “I don’t think music journalism in terms of this form is really taken that seriously – this is largely because the music itself I don’t think is taken that seriously in terms of a mainstream gift.”
In fact, Theo would like to write himself – via a Website. “Look to the future for me to start putting my hat in the ring,” he hints.
The lifelong music head concedes that today he discerns few musical evolutions. “There aren’t really any terribly new musical forms to me, there’s just new musical artists, and whether or not they adhere to a construct or not is on them,” he says. Indeed, Parrish hears a strong house influence in contemporary urban music – by The Neptunes, among others – yet regrets that the “avant-garde” goes unacknowledged. Dance music is isolated again and again. The US underground is simply too transgressive for the mainstream to recognise. “It’s a little bit of a rebellious idea that you have to get in subversively in a lot of senses,” Theo asserts.
America’s major labels have never known how to market Black techno and house producers whose music resists the negative cultural stereotypes flaunted in the average rap video. They pose a threat. “The powers that be don’t really wanna see an independent Black producer make a huge impact that they can’t control.”
Parrish himself is not against commercial success, per se. “The commercial aspect of things doesn’t bother me – it’s just the control you lose when you become commercial,” he explains.
As with his contemporaries in Detroit’s electronic movement, Parrish is realistic about his future. “It’s a challenge a lot of times to keep doing it without the idea that there’s gonna be a big pie in the sky. I think the thing about this form of music is that there is the idea that you’re gonna be doing it, and you’re gonna be doing it alone, and there is a community that supports you, but in terms of you making sure that you’re understood, it’s more or less on you.”
Australian Tour Dates
Fri Feb 27th – Melbourne @ Hi-Fi Bar and Ballroom [BUY TICKETS]
Sat Feb 28th – Sydney @ Plan B (The Bourbon) [BUY TICKETS]
Fri Mar 5th – Newcastle @ The Mercury Hotel [BUY TICKETS]
Thu Mar 11th – Adelaide for Universal playground
Fri Mar 12th – Perth @ Geisha Nightclub
