Detroit: Central to evolution of American music

Few American cities are as synonymous with the evolution of popular music as is Detroit.

Ever since Berry Gordy founded Tamla/Motown Records in 1959, the ‘Motor Town’ has been a veritable assembly line for acts as diverse as The Four Tops, Stevie Wonder, and Martha and the Vandellas. Gordy’s idea was to put a ‘pop’ twist on black soul. His hit acts included Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross (pictured) and Smokey Robinson.

Gaye’s ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ and ‘What’s Going On?’ are just two of the tracks that will be forever associated with the Motown Sound. Motown was always on the look-out for new talent. Little Stevie Wonder signed to the label when he was just 11. Michael Jackson was barely that age when his family group, the Jackson Five, signed to Motown 10 years later.

Detroit is not just the home of soul music, however. The city also spawned the ‘godfather of punk’, Iggy Pop, and the proto-punk band, the MC5, and it inspired one of David Bowie’s early hits in America, ‘Panic in Detroit’.

As Detroit’s fortunes have waned, so has its music grown darker. Marshall Mathers, better known as Eminem, is just one of the many hip hop artists who grew up there, and whose lyrics are informed by the poverty, disaffection, and crime for which the city is now arguably better known than its music.