Detroit House Music Takes a Swaggering Step Out of the Darkness (Published 2017) – The New York Times

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By Mike Rubin
Frank Ocean, Solange and A Tribe Called Quest have top billing at the Panorama Festival on Randalls Island in New York next weekend. Squint a little, however, and the finer print farther down the poster reveals another vital expression of contemporary African-American popular music: a showcase of some of today’s finest and funkiest Detroit house producers and D.J.s.
In clubs and record stores around the world, the names of Detroit house luminaries are uttered in hushed tones, their self-released vinyl lining shop walls when available and fetching eye-popping prices online when not. For devotees of Detroit’s distinctly syncopated, uniquely swaggering sound, Friday at Panorama will be an opportunity to see a handful of the scene’s most important artists do something rare in the United States: share a stage outdoors in the light of day instead of near dawn in a dark club.
The story was quite different in the late 1990s, when the Detroit house music producer Theo Parrish played his first New York D.J. gig at the Chelsea megaclub Twilo, long since shuttered. At the time, Mr. Parrish was a resident D.J. at Better Days, a tiny, no-frills sweatbox with cinder-block walls and minimal lighting in Detroit where D.J.s could intimately connect with a predominantly African-American community of dancers and fellow musicians. Twilo, on the other hand, was a gargantuan playground replete with lasers and smoke machines, home to a monthly residency by the British trance music titans Sasha and Digweed. The difference between the Motor City and Big Apple dance music cultures could hardly have been starker.
After a seemingly endless set by the night’s mediocre headliner, Mr. Parrish took to the decks and began with some jazzy tracks including Hugh Masekela’s “Mama,” which spurred a migration from the dance floor to the exits. The exodus deepened when Mr. Parrish played the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar,” and shortly after he spun Kajagoogoo’s “Too Shy,” club management yanked him off the turntables. “They gave me the Apollo Theater cane,” Mr. Parrish said over the phone from Detroit, chuckling at the recollection. “That was a learning curve. But I really thought they were going to go for it, that’s the truth.”
The idea that a nervous nightclub host would pull the plug on Mr. Parrish today is laughable: Over the last 20 years, he’s established himself as one of the most respected D.J.s in the world, capable of charting an expansive, open-minded journey over the course of his sets, spanning not only house but soul, disco, African music and jazz. He’s also a singular producer, an influential remixer and a cornerstone of the hardy and prolific Detroit house music scene, which boasts such globally acclaimed talents as Moodymann (born Kenny Dixon Jr.) and Omar-S (Alex Smith).
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