Poetry. Spirituality. Soul music. In a world of over-hyped superstar DJs there are some real masters who still weave a spell over their audience. Derrick May is one of them. Derrick May is back in Australia, he spoke to Cyclone earlier this year.

In the 80s a trio of Belleville High school friends created a new form of music in Detroit that would transform club culture. Inspired by the seminal electronic music of Europe – most saliently Kraftwerk – and the soul, funk and house of Black America, Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson dreamt up ‘techno’. May once memorably stated, “the music is just like Detroit – a complete mistake. It’s like George Clinton and Kraftwerk stuck in an elevator.” However, techno was never just another genre of music – it was more conceptual and cerebral, entailing an ever evolving ideology, fantasy and aesthetic, all bound up with the cultural landscape of post-industrial Detroit. Techno was futuristic. May summed up this ethos with his beautiful composition ‘Strings Of Life’, a tribute to Dr Martin Luther King, which he put out as Rhythim Is Rhythim on his own indie label, Transmat. Branded as The New Dance Sound Of Detroit on a Virgin compilation, techno swept across the UK, soundtracking the so-called ‘Summer Of Love’. Still, all these years on, mainstream America, raved out by white trance DJs Sasha and Digweed, doesn’t get it. As an African-American creation, techno challenges too many fixed cultural paradigms – structures that place “Blackness” outside history, science and technology in a metaphorical ghetto.

If in the 90s May – always sagacious – came to feel ambivalent about ‘techno’ and the connotations it acquired following the birth of ‘rave’ in Europe, then today he is more philosophical. “Techno is a word; it does not define techno music as a genre. Techno music is far and beyond the definition of what Joe, Bob, Bill, Sue, Mary and Beth would imagine techno music to be. So if saying that the music is techno you’re gonna get people through the door to pay attention to it, to listen to it, then that’s what it is, unfortunately – that’s not what it was all about. The whole concept of techno, to call music ‘techno’, was to say that the music was derived and was inspired from technology; that was always the whole point of techno. It was never, ever to become a trend or to become a phenomenon.”

May was an integral force behind The Music Institute, the club that gave the Motor City an outlet for its new music and brought together Black, white, straight and gay partygoers for a spell between 1988 and 1989. More than a DJ, May would ‘play music with love’ – and occasionally he now uses the word ‘love’ as a pure emotive counterpoint to the drug-induced ‘euphoria’ that defines today’s vacuous rave culture.

May DJed in Melbourne on the New Millennium Eve, and since then he has remixed DJ Rolando’s ‘Jaguar’, the song that reminded the dance scene of techno’s roots in ‘the D’, turning it into a Mayday tech-jazz classic. In 2001 Derrick was booked to headline the DEMF (Detroit Electronic Music Festival), DJed on the Area:One Music Festival with Moby, and was awarded the Hennessy Black Music Month Award for his part in Detroit’s history. May’s music has been deployed for a PlayStation game, while jazz progenitor Herbie Hancock has lately reinterpreted ‘Strings Of Life’.

This year May has again lined up a batch of fresh releases on Transmat by newer artists like Rodenbush, John Beltran and John Arnold. The label has nurtured many of the luminaries within contemporary electronic music – Carl Craig, Stacey Pullen, The Advent, Laurent Garnier, Aril Brikha and even the Australian Microworld. Few acknowledge that Joey Beltram’s ‘Energy Flash’ was issued on Transmat. Strangely, May, a gifted A&R, is rarely asked about this role. “If I was not a recording artist and if I didn’t have Transmat Records, I would have probably never had the chance to be an A&R, because I didn’t graduate from university. Most of the A&R people who work at record companies are graduates of some sort of communication or some sort of skills course, but I do believe that I’m one of the best A&R in the world, outside of being an artist, because of what I listen to when I listen to music – before I’ve listened to sales, before I listen to what I like and what I think is funky and what I think is hot – I’m listening for the future. I’m listening for what will stand the test of time. I’m listening for what I hear is the beginning of a great future in a kid – be it Laurent Garnier, be it James Pennington, be it Jay Denham, be it Carl Craig, be it Kenny Larkin, be it Aril Brikha, be it anybody, whoever. I’m listening for the future. I’m listening for what this person can do down the line.”

May himself has a lot happening down the line – he is interested in the possibilities of composing scores for movies and video games, and is “stoked” about commencing his first album, a project long anticipated by anyone ever interested in electronic music. Derrick has resolved to release an LP via R&S after years of legal wrangling for contractual freedom.

“I can be honest and say the only reason I haven’t made music is because – and I always seem to have a lot of excuses and a lot of reasons – but the real, real reality of all the reasons is that I have a record contract that I’ve been honestly trying to get out of for several years and I’ve not been able to get out of it. It looks like Big Brother Corporate is gonna get its way with me. I’m gonna have to make that album with this company, because if I don’t make something soon, it’s gonna be too late – so I have to do something. I have to!”

“I’m probably gonna have to settle the litigation, just do the album and just look at the bright side – I’m putting out music and just deal with it, get out of the deal by doing good music. A lot of artists have been in fucked up contracts and I think their egos get the best of ‘em, which is what I’ve been caught up in, too. My ego’s been getting the best of me – and that’s the reason why I haven’t been making music.”

As much as he loves DJing, Derrick wants to re-establish himself as a producer – first and foremost. “They realise that they’ve put me in a situation, and they also realise that, as a DJ, I love to do it, but they also realise that I don’t wanna do it forever,” he says of his predicament with R&S. “I like to DJ because I like to DJ, I like to play. I don’t like to play for money. I like to play to earn money for what I do, and to be paid well for my talent, but I don’t like to do this as a living. I like to make music as a living, and play records as a way of life.”

(TONIGHT) Wednesday December 18 @ Gas Nightclub, Sydney. 

Friday December 20  – May Day @ Public Office, Melbourne. 

Wednesday December 25 – Christmas Party @ Music House, Adelaide. 

Check ITM whatson for more details.