♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Hello.

I'm talking to you from Detroit City, and I would like for you to understand me.

My people, where I come from.

We are very complex.

Our thoughts are very different than yours.

Please understand this.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Crowd cheering ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Acoustic guitar playing ] A little Prince...looks.

[ Guitar amplified ] It's such a magic... [ Laughs ] [ Laughs ] [ Guitar distortion ] This guitar, um, my mother bought for me.

My mom and dad bought for me.

Um...1986, I think.

1987.

And, um... the reason why this tape is here is because I did a photo -- photo session and I put some masking tape on it and wrote techno.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -My favorite Carl Craig track, it tells this story about the Detroit from the 1990s.

It's very dark.

It's very gloomy, almost as if you're looking through a pair of glasses that's like somewhat foggy.

♪♪ ♪♪ [ Electronic music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -I always wanted to improvise.

So when I took piano lessons as a kid, um, I didn't like the concept that I had to follow the rules.

Carl chose something other than the kiddie music that I was teaching.

I remember he and I went to a music store once and he wanted to buy an instrument.

-It was a gadget that made sounds.

That wasn't music to me, but to him, it was music.

That I think probably is kind of the first -- first -- the beginning of his choosing... of what he liked, what he liked, what his mother didn't understand.

You know, our parents were always very supportive with, you know, in any kind of endeavor that we wanted to pursue.

And so, um, they made sure that we had opportunities.

My mom exposed us to a lot of things, a lot of different genres of music.

Mitch Miller had an album, um, yeah.

"Yellow Rose of Texas."

♪ -♪ There's a yellow rose in Texas that I am gonna see ♪ ♪ Nobody else could miss her, not half as much as me ♪ -I think it was Mitch Miller.

"Yellow Rose of Texas" was the song they made.

My mom got this album and really wanted me to listen to this, you know.

And we could sit around and have, like, this kind of sing along by the campfire kind of thing to this Lawrence Welk type music and I couldn't -- I couldn't stand it.

I couldn't stand it.

And, um -- And every time I'd say, "Yeah, you know, my influences come from my brother, musically," my mom likes to jump in and is like, "Yeah, I bought him this Mitch Miller record."

[ Laughs ] -My older brother kind of, you know, being the oldest, he would kind of dictate some of the music that we would listen to as well.

So he was into Black Sabbath.

He was into Led Zeppelin, you know, um, rock.

I mean, I remember, um, buying a, um, Black Sabbath album.

My brother loved that album.

[ "Iron Man" plays ] ♪♪ -We grew up with so much music in our house, it's almost inevitable that one of us was going to do something more creative than anybody else.

[ Percussion music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -I used to work at a shop doing Xerox copies and those machines... We had, uh, three of them, I think, that were these big ones with sorters and stuff.

And they made polyrhythms all day.

One would do this rhythm.

[ Rapid mouth sounds ] The other one's going -- [ Rapid mouth sounds ] But they're not going in sync with each other.

It's like... [ Rapid beatbox sounds ] I'm hearing these things all day long.

So when I go home and I'm not even thinking about that I heard these rhythms during the day.

I'm just making rhythms and stuff.

Those machines had a big influence on me.

Um, the first Planet E record, 69 "4 Jazz Funk Classics," one of the tracks is called "My Machines."

-The name "Jazz Funk Classics" comes from an album by a British group called Throbbing Gristle.

Uh, and he was taking fun out of their fun because when they put out an album called "Jazz Funk Classics," of course, Throbbing Gristle don't sound like jazz.

There's nothing classical about them.

[ Electronic music plays ] ♪♪ I got this joke right away.

He applied it in the same way that Throbbing Gristle applied it.

This is not jazz funk.

This is very strange... breakbeats meet very strange synthesizers.

Um... It's a sound that's utterly unique.

When we think about electronic music now, even Carl, what Carl plays now as a DJ, it's much more tied to the way the, um, software works.

Specifically, it's a lot more grid based.

This is completely loose and wild and free, um, and improvisationary.

Um, and it lays the ground for a lot of records that Carl made afterwards.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Once I started connecting the dots and seeing how, like, Carl used music, and seeing how it was so based, like, in a weird way, like a future aspect.

In some of his records, you know, he would sample, like, the Flying Lizards, which is, like, some...super obscure band from the UK.

-♪ Lovers ♪ ♪ And other strangers ♪ -The music that was coming from England was a big thing for us.

We were fans of Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

We were fans of Heaven 17 and -- and all this stuff.

So, I was invited to play at Town and Country Club in London as a sideman to Rhythim Is Rhythim.

I was like super excited.

And my mom... Said "Okay... Where's the ticket?"

I didn't know anybody in England.

I wanted my son to be safe.

-And the ticket came and she looked at it and she said, "It's a one-way ticket.

There's no way in hell you're going."

And you know, of course, me, I'm just upset, huffing and puffing, but, you know, I mean -- I don't stand there and say, "I'm a man.

You can't tell me what to do, and I'm going to leave."

I respect my mom.

-Sometimes, he -- he loves to say that... ...I was more stern than he liked.

I mean... What else can I say?

I love my son.

So I listened to her.

I went back, you know.

"Oh, man, I can't -- No, I can't, I can't go on a..." I don't even think -- I don't even think I played it like it was my idea.

I even just said, "No, my mom's not letting me go because it's a one-way ticket."

[ Laughs ] Which most guys would say like, "Yeah, man.

Nah, man.

You know, no, I can't.

This is one-way ticket, you gotta give me a two-way -- you gotta get me a return ticket."

So... I went back and we had some discussion about it and they got me a round-trip ticket.

And... Thank you, Mom.

[ Laughs ] -Okay, Carl Craig.

Come here, man.

So we finally made it into England.

Right.

So how you feel?

-It's kind of like going to Evian or something, and it's like, "Oh, this is where the water comes from."

It's like, "Oh, this is where Gary Numan comes from.

This is where A Guy Called Gerald comes from, S'Express, Baby Ford, you know, Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

All this stuff that we were -- we were listening to, I was there, you know, I was meeting these people.

And this was really what made me, um, like, super excited about composing and being in the scene.

-♪ Here in my car I can only receive ♪ ♪ I can listen to you.

♪ -Eventually we found each other kind of nicely.

Carl was one of those guys who was coming from the foundations of the Detroit scene, but was making music that sort of just tapped into where I was at.

-I'm a fan.

People are into the rave stuff, they're into techno, but they're also into the kind of stuff that I'm playing.

So it's a good thing.

I released this record in the UK -- The InnerZone Orchestra on "Talking Loud."

Talking Loud was conceived as the label that would allow its acts to develop without any pressure to produce chart hits.

Commercial success has come their way with three of their signings.

He had the, um, the mystique of Detroit as well.

Carl Craig on your record, you know, was -- I don't know if it sold records, but it looked good and that's all we cared about.

♪♪ So he was coming up with the perfect dance music that I was looking for as a DJ.

So it wasn't sort of house or techno.

It was a slower beat, but it had the energy.

And so that was what, really, kind of I wanted from Carl.

And he delivered it like high-end, you know, sonics.

You know, because he was a DJ and he was a producer, so he got it.

But it had that kind of American -- I hate to say the word exotic -- but to us it was like, "Wow, it's coming from Detroit."

-Detroit!

-[ Crowd cheering ] Detroit is where techno was created.

If you didn't know, now you know.

The brothers that made this music, Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, and Derrick May -- Legends!

Always gotta give respect to the brothers for coming up with this music, for making it even possible that we're here today.

Because that music went all around the globe and it came right back here to Movement tonight.

Thank you.

I'm so happy to see you all here.

This is a beautiful time.

Are you proud to be from Detroit?

Hell, yeah!

I'm proud to be from Detroit!

♪♪ ♪♪ -Derrick had a loft on Gratiot.

Kevin Saunderson had his studio and was living out of the back of his studio downstairs in the next building.

And then Juan Atkins had his studio downstairs from Derrick in the same building.

So this was, like, Techno Boulevard.

This is the place to be.

Techno Boulevard, where I learned how to produce records.

It was great because we'd all hear what somebody else did and -- and have to one-up it in some way or another.

And we're all borrowing each other's equipment too.

So, you know, there might have been one 909 that went between everybody's studio.

-Metroplex Records was downstairs.

It wasn't in another building.

KMS Records, Kevin Saunderson, was literally less than 15 feet away.

We were all next door to each other, so we were driving each other.

-It was a real camaraderie, but it was also kind of vicious competition as well.

-It's not often that you're able to be in the backyard of a genre -- a birth of a genre of music.

We have the fathers, Derrick and Kevin and Juan, but they're on this level, right?

But then Carl has his own little ledge, and it's just big enough for Carl.

[ Laughing ] That's his ledge.

And he's got that on lock.

♪♪ There was a few people that I really studied, and Carl was like -- Carl was the main one because his stuff was so otherworldly, but it was still funky at the same time.

-Because of -- of, um, the time that I grew up here and, uh, all the abandoned buildings and the abandoned factories, it really gave me, uh, the freedom to fantasize about, you know, what it would be like if it -- if we didn't have buildings that were abandoned and look blown out.

♪♪♪ ♪♪ Detroit is very conducive for using imagination to build new pieces of art.

I think that the possibilities are endless to what you can dream up to fit into this lost Metropolis.

♪♪ ♪♪ -"Blade Runner" was the movie that was saying what the future was for us.

We used to sit on the floor and it was just synthesizers around us.

And as inspiration, we would watch "Blade Runner" and listen to the Vangelis soundtrack, and say like, "Oh man, you know, it would be great if we could do a 'Blade Runner' soundtrack."

And all while we're doing that, we're reading graphic novels like "RanXerox."

We're also highly influenced by "The Mack" and "Shaft" and, you know, all the Blaxploitation stuff that was coming around and the militancy of what was happening with Blaxploitation.

-When you lead a revolution, why would you be standing still?

-So we were building, or at least I was building a new world for myself musically, um, that would potentially, um... you know, elevate, um, my experiences.

My American experiences.

-Inside of the grooves of the vinyls or inside of these songs are -- is a mythology and imaginary world.

I don't think all of these producers were talking and actively trying to build this world, but I think their experiences and approach to electronic music allowed them to kind of attune.

But there's an artist, Abdul Qadim Haqq, who did art for Carl Craig, in which he kind of depicted him as a sort of meditative spiritual force that could use a robot called "E-3000."

It's kind of like a Gundam suit that Carl Craig could jump inside of and fly off into space and, you know, do battle with the group that Underground Resistance called the Programmers.

♪♪ ♪♪ The politicality of techno is also really interesting because you get a few different camps and it's all based on their ages.

So you have someone like Jeff Mills and Mad Mike who are kids in '67 when the riots are happening and they're, you know, staring out of their windows, watching tanks, like, drive down the street and, you know, Black people being shot by cops and, you know, they're seeing these protests happening.

And that leaves a mark on them.

But with Juan Atkins, he's too young.

And same thing with Derrick May.

They saw Detroit as... a city that was thriving and then a city that just suddenly wasn't thriving, which is how they moved to Belleville, like, out into the suburbs.

And so they have this idea of kind of like lost futures.

and then you have Carl Craig, who comes later and misses all of it, but is sort of inspired by and being mentored by all of these people who've experienced all of these things.

Working with Derrick May on the Rhythim is Rhythim project, it doesn't look like techno.

It was like watching Herbie Hancock or something, and they were jamming on the keys and making this jazz fusion, but completely automated music.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -When I heard the first techno tunes, I could not believe there were these Black guys making this music, which was a kind of weird take on disco, but it was not.

It was its own thing as well, and it was so emotional and so beautiful.

In '88, this weird sound was in the clubs, like, "What is this sound?"

It sounds like electronic stuff.

Kind of sounds like what we were listening to on the radio that Mojo was playing, but this is more dancey stuff.

And it was the Detroit techno stuff starting to come up in the clubs.

I was already listening to house music.

Uh, we were going to Chicago, driving to Chicago on the weekends to listen to these amazing house DJs, um, on the radio.

And we would record them and come back to Detroit.

-This is 94 here, so you're coming in from over there, I think.

And you just see all this coming, and it was just magic.

Seeing this, the skyline sparkle 9 at night or whatever it was, it was amazing, amazing.

This was -- It was -- Coming from Detroit, it was like being, you know, a guy from a small town coming to the big city for the first time.

So they had a lot of blues that was in Chicago.

Detroit didn't have a lot of blues.

Detroit had more jazz.

Chicago had more blues.

So I really think a lot of that comes out in the music.

Um... The blues is a bad... [ Laughs ] The blues is a bad... [ Train honking ] What up though!

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -My most favorite techno track that has feeling is by Carl.

"Desire."

I don't if you know "Desire."

69.

Oh, my God.

For me, it was like... Okay, so you see this reaction that I'm having?

When you have this kind of reaction to music, that's when, you know, like... Yeah.

♪♪ ♪♪ -When I introduced "Desire," I talk about my desire wasn't just about girls.

My desire was about to do exactly what I'm doing today.

My desire was to get out of my parents basement and be able to -- to make music all the time.

That's, like, my life is making music.

♪♪ -You know Carl's "Desire."

I think to me, that -- that is Carl.

That, to me, represents Carl the best way of all his music is "Desire."

You know, this hunger, this joy, this happiness, this love, this longing, this beauty, it's just -- that's Carl Craig to me.

-I met Carl at the airport.

And he came to say hello to me.

He said something really corny, like, "Are you waiting for me?

I've been waiting for you all my life."

And I thought he was a stupid American.

Um, you know, but then we got talking and he asked me what I was reading.

I was reading a book that I thought he would never -- it would just fly over his head, and he knew what I was reading.

So then I started to pay attention to him.

And, you know, what was funny with Carl is that, you know, later on, when I was already hooked on Carl, he admitted that he never read the book, but he happened to read about the book in an in-flight magazine.

And -- But, yeah, it worked.

It worked.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Just say hello to the audience.

-Yeah, yeah.

Do what you want to do.

Yeah.

-And your microphone?

- I have a separate microphone.

-Yeah.

-One for video.

-Are we ready?

-I haven't tested for... -Ready when you are.

-Should we already be on stage maybe?

-I think we can.

-Okay.

♪♪ -I think jazz was another way of thought for me, because my way of life has to do with synthesizers and drum machines, you know?

And, uh, the regiment, uh, nature of what you can do with a drum machine is -- is quite limited.

So with jazz, it gave me the idea to think outside of the regiment and to be able to turn it around so that I put myself and made my electronic music feel more, uh, human.

I like that.

You know, you had to put elements, I call them human elements, inside of some music that's very different.

And so he, to me, was responsible for adding the flavor of funk, jazz and classic inside of the techno.

[ Jazz music plays ] I call what I make Detroit Techno, but I don't make Detroit Techno.

I make music that has, you know, its very strong roots in Detroit techno.

But... how I've been able to move musically over the years is because I take my influences and I put it into music.

The root really was jazz.

I followed jazz for a while.

I imagine that the music, including jazz and other music that he had, they all kind of came through and gave him a special interpretation in which he had for the music.

-I personally think Carl is modern-day jazz.

I think there's elements -- You can hear elements of original industrial or the New Romantic stuff from England in the early '80s, like Gary Numan, like Visage.

You can hear that in his music, but you can also hear the overtones are... It's Black jazz.

And it's a very Black sound.

-By the time I met Francisco Mora, Francisco and I latched on to each other.

He had an impact on me from his work with Sun Ra.

-I got together with Carl in my house after a discussion with my daughter, who was all into techno at that time, and she came talking about, "Techno is the new thing."

And I'm going like, "There's no 'new thing' nothing."

So she went in to all these guys, you know -- you know, [laughs] Derrick May, Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, you know, Carl Craig and said, "My dad says that you guys ain't doing nothing new."

So Carl called me up and said, "Mr.

Mora, why are you saying that we're not doing anything new?"

And I told him, I said, "Look, the experience of Black musicians -- Black Americans with electronic music goes way back to the early 1950s, you know, with Sun Ra playing electric piano already."

Probably about a week after that, he called me up and asked me if I wanted to record an album with him.

And, uh, we recorded the, uh -- the jazz version of "Bug in the Bass Bin."

-"Bug in the Bass Bin" was my, you know, electronic techno music that was influenced by what was implanted in me.

[ Laughs ] By listening to jazz radio, um, listening to a few jazz records that my dad had in my house and stuff.

-"Bug in the Bass Bin" was really such a game changer, you know, and it works on two tempos, you know?

That was why it was so amazing.

♪♪ ♪♪ -This tune sounded like it was made to be sped up.

It felt like something Miles Davis would have -- could have played over.

And it was this doom-doom-doom, doom-doom-doom.

But it had this jangly sub-bass.

The sub-bass was just really deep and with these drums on top.

So I thought, "Wow, I like it, but let me speed it up."

♪♪ So then it became a real thing, and I was really worried that Carl was going to hate it because I was thinking, basically, we're...around with the guy's tune.

We've sped it up and he might think, "You guys are taking the piss."

And Carl loved it.

And to me, that was one of the proudest moments, man.

-Carl's records were really unique because, you know, there were breaks, there was just -- there were jazz elements.

There was this different sound in some of the records.

You know, this new sound, drum and bass, coming in and you suddenly had people like Roni doing something with jazz loops.

-But I think that we have a culture combination as well.

I think we look similar.

I think we both look like each other.

He looks like he could be my brother, you know what I mean, so it's kind of -- it's kind of really cool to know that you have someone, um, who's, you know -- he's got the same skin color as you.

And, you know, I think we connect on that level.

-You were having Roni Size, Carl Craig, DJ Shadow, Masters at Work, you know, all played together.

-Bristol!

Roni Size is up!

Roni Size is up!

Let's go!

♪♪ ♪♪ -You can't say that we actually could have done this without the influences of Detroit techno.

♪♪ -Also, you've got to remember, England was the first country to embrace techno, to embrace what Carl and them lot were doing.

So there is a real link between England or London and Detroit.

The speeding up of "Bug in the Bass Bin" started off the whole ghetto techno thing.

-♪ Hey ♪ ♪ Hey ♪ ♪♪ -Ghettotech, I would just describe it as like, techno with some, like, raunchy ghetto ass lyrics.

♪♪ My mom introduced me to Carl Craig's music.

-♪ Goddamn, who mama that is?

♪ ♪ Damn, who mama that is?

♪ -I had recently met him.

It was like, "Wow, like, this is who you are.

Like, I've been listening to your stuff, you know what I'm saying, for so long and now to see, like, you in the flesh, and to get a chance to hear your story from you.

And also like you'd be interested enough to hear, like, my story and where I've come from," it's -- it's pretty cool.

-I feel that that mentorship, slash sharing what you know with others, it only strengthens and makes the community that much more stronger and that much more unique.

Because we do share and because we care about, uh, the betterment of the next artist or the next guy.

So there is no, "Oh, I don't want to show you what I know because I don't want you taking my job."

- Right.

-What up, what up?

-What's happening, baby?

-You alright?

-Good to see you.

-You as well.

-I was this, you know, jazz studies student who knew all this theory and chords, harmony and all that stuff, and then all of these rules that I learned in terms of everything should be in a key, um, in order for it to work melodically.

Carl said it doesn't have to be as long, as long as it feels good.

I was like...

"Oh."

[ Piano playing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -Am I playing it right?

-Yeah.

-Huh?

I'm asking you, does it sound right?

-Man, you got the teacher following you.

You must be doing something so amazing.

♪♪ -What I can respect about Carl, just like the genre of jazz music is like you can't move any genre forward unless you understand where that genre came from.

And so just like, you know, uh, electronic music, be it Kraftwerk or disco or funk or even jazz, like before all of those styles of music came up, there was something else that inspired those.

♪♪ Carl is one of the few people I know that can recall records across all genres.

♪♪ -Suddenly Carl was making the connection with, like, black jazz heritage, and he was really all about obsessing on legacy and mixing legacy with future thinking.

Carl Craig, to a degree, is kind of the Miles Davis of this generation of techno producers.

♪♪ -My musical idol is Miles Davis.

Miles Davis was totally anti minstrel show.

And Detroit, all of us Detroit artists are totally anti minstrel shows.

That's why you don't see us on stage, you know, jumping around and pouring, you know, pouring alcohol on our heads and... throwing...out to the crowd and all that kind of stuff.

It's a more measured, serious thing.

♪♪ ♪♪ -That was the time when he became known as Babyface.

[ Laughs ] When I met you, you were 18 years old, little babyface... And now you're, you know, you're the big boss.

-Big boss of trouble.

-That's the power of music.

You can make a track in your bedroom in Detroit and it can end up influencing, you know, this 18 year-old kid in the Swiss mountainsides.

Mirko is my brother.

You know, the affirmation I get from Mirko is the affirmation that I give from him being able to even do something amazing like this.

♪♪ [ Music thumping ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Carl came into the picture when we created a mobile record store.

Okay?

So... And we would deliver records to DJs because we didn't have a brick and mortar, so we would just take records to guys.

One day, there was a small space in the bottom floor of a building on Gratiot that we got for record sales.

And Carl had a space upstairs and he'd always come down.

And he'd always acknowledge us and how proud he was of us doing this music.

And he'd always ask me questions.

And he said, "You know, I'm doing something so big.

It's just gonna be unbelievable.

It's just gonna be unbelievable."

I'm like, "Well, what is it about?

"Well, I can't say what it is," he said, "but it's gonna be big."

And that's when he knew that Planet E was gonna be huge.

♪♪ -In the first days, it was me putting out music from mutual friends and people who have the same, same ideas.

I never wanted Planet E to be a label that, you know, you knew what the label was gonna put out.

I wanted to keep people guessing.

♪ My name is Carl Craig, the owner and founder ♪ ♪ Of Planet E Communications in Detroit ♪ ♪ We have some supreme music ♪ ♪ This is taking over the world material ♪ -He was interested in, like, covering the world and seeing the music through a Detroit lens, but still being, like, aware of a lot of others.

You know, he didn't have blinders on at all.

Whereas some people just kind of stayed in their lane, he was, I think, taking it all in.

And that resulted in many projects, not only under his own name, but things he like, signed of others.

♪♪ -I met him through my day job, when I was just making sandwiches at a local deli.

Carl would come in, he was a regular customer.

and he ordered some food to take away.

And I had a tape on me, a demo tape.

And so I put it in a sandwich, and I wrapped it up, and I wrote "demo on rye," and I put it in his bag, and he left with it, unsuspecting, and got home and realized there was this tape in there and listened to it.

And luckily he liked it and I didn't get fired for it.

So that demo ended up being my first record on Planet E. On the cover, there's a picture, an illustration of a sandwich with tape in it.

♪ We score large ♪ ♪ We're taking over this place ♪ ♪ We're going to take this...home ♪ ♪ Planet E is the future ♪ -There's not a lot of companies that stick around, especially record labels, that stick around for so long.

Planet E 30 is another level because it says 30 years that, you know, I've been able to keep the company in business, but it also is like, that's a long time, you know.

-There ain't enough money in selling records these...days to do it.

-No.

No.

-Just you give out as many as you can sell these days.

It's real...up.

-Man.

I'm lucky I got a P&D deal for my upcoming album.

-Okay.

-With Juno.

-Okay, cool.

-So it's cool, yeah.

-Yeah, man, get ready to sell 300 copies.

-Ah, I'm almost 55.

What the...am I doing?

-Almost 55?

-Yeah, man.

-You're old!

-Yes.

Yes, yes, I am old.

-You're old.

-Well, you know, you'd never guess it.

People always guess ten years younger.

-Okay.

That's good.

If you think so.

-How old am I, Carl?

How old do I look?

-Well, you already said 55.

-See, I -- it poisoned you!

Yeah.

-I wouldn't have said any younger.

-[Laughing] Oh, man!

-We're true to our -- to ourselves, you know, musically.

We're not trying to make, you know, top 40 hits or anything like that.

But Detroit techno, I think, has benefited from the... the greatness of Detroit that's happened outside of Detroit techno.

-As long as people still make music for themselves and for their own spirit, then Detroit's always gonna stay in the forefront of making great music.

♪♪ -Thanks, y'all.

I'm Kesswa.

I think about all of those things that have influenced Carl, like Detroit's musical landscape, the hip hop landscape, jazz, gospel, all of these different, um, communities that exist in this, this city, but are also in conversation with each other.

♪♪ -DEMF was an idea that we all wanted to see.

And when it was the possibility to make it happen, I knew it was something that had to happen.

We needed a new community excitement.

The festival was a project to get the music to the people because it was a free festival.

So we had all this electronic music, we had rap music, we had, um, avant-garde music.

♪♪ -I started going to the Detroit Electronic Music Festival in 2005.

And I'm a photographer and I took like tons of photos.

It was the beat.

The beat is what got me.

So I started going back every year.

Carl Craig, of all the DJs I've seen and heard and magnificent DJs from around the world, Carl is the most original I've ever experienced.

I mean, I love all genres of music and I love, I love sound, all different kinds of sound.

And that's what Carl would give me.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -His influence and his desire to step outside of what other people in our genre is doing, like -- Nobody can really compare to Carl with what he's doing.

I mean, he did, what has -- What hasn't he not done Carl?

And 30 something years later, he's still pushing boundaries.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -It's a big range of what you can touch when you enter his world.

And I think, um, this is actually really something very exceptional.

I think music is... getting to be really nice if it's floating a very bit above the floor.

♪♪ ♪♪ So I was asking him if he wanted to join this project with me to do like a re-composition of the Bolero.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -It almost seemed like I could feel the ground shake, you know, 'cause it was another level of excitement, musical excitement, you know, something that I hadn't done.

'Cause one of the first instruments outside of guitar that I learned how to play, were timpani.

And I used to play concert bass when I was in school.

So, um, so it kind of brought me back into that world that is outside of electronic music, but outside of electric music as well.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -When I first saw Carl DJ, it was actually really funny and inspiring too, because it was his friend's birthday.

And he was playing only Prince.

Only Prince.

And wearing his... I think he was drinking some red wine maybe.

And they're all vinyl.

And he was wearing an Obama '08 shirt.

So to me, [chuckles] to me, when I actually heard him play live and knew it was him, officially, I couldn't stop laughing because it was looking like, this is my dad playing only Prince.

But then, like, also it'd be, like, this is the coolest dad that's only playing a Prince and drinking wine, wearing an Obama shirt.

It was so cool.

Um, and that made me, like, really respect, um, him because he's in this intimate setting, but you still know this gentleman's, like, a star.

It doesn't matter where he's placed in the world.

I-I make -- I think I told him once.

Hopefully this is not the first time he hears this joke, but I feel like Carl Craig could work at a mail, um -- a post office and still be a star.

-I was a postal worker.

Our oldest son, he works for the post office.

In later years, my wife became a school teacher.

Our daughter became school teacher.

-We had a home.

We could pay our bills.

And we could live in a neighborhood that was safe.

So all of those things are necessary in order to produce, um, children who feel good about themselves, and who feel good about life.

-You know, I could fill up this whole room with Air Jordans, um, you know, Virgil Abloh Air Jordans with -- with, uh, Bottega Veneta, everything in here But that still doesn't mean that I'm past -- the -- the possibility of being affected by, um, the things that we were trying to, uh, avoid when I was -- when I was a teenager.

Because my mom was scared to death when I was a kid.

She was scared that, you know, cause crack cocaine was coming in, uh, drive-bys were happening, the police were -- were...people up.

-Well, I can give you a very white-boy suburban perspective on it.

In the burbs, you were insulated from that.

You were peripherally aware of what was going on, but you really weren't aware.

And you also really had no idea what the reasons were, the underpinnings.

There was a very racist mentality that a lot of people in the suburbs did not identify as racist, but it was a deep ignorance and this -- this fear of of the other -- fear of the city, fear of Black people.

-A few weeks ago, the police in Detroit, Michigan, broke a huge crack ring.

-Police!

Police!

Get up!

Get up!

Get up!

Hands against the wall!

-There was certainly, uh, an adversarial relationship between the suburbs and the city because you had a very outspoken Black mayor in Coleman Young, who people in the burbs couldn't stand him.

-Today, heroin and cocaine is everybody's problem.

They exist in the college towns and in the country towns and across the nation.

And it's all our problems.

The problems know no boundary.

-Coleman Young didn't take no... So you had, you know, this racial line of people that are like, "...Detroit."

And then you had Coleman Young that was like, "...y'all."

So it was -- it was really, um, ingrained in us.

It was -- It was, uh, something that was happening, uh, daily.

-Carl went to Lutheran school.

So that means that he did interact with, um, other white -- other students who were white.

And so he got to know some other people.

And I think that made him freer to choose, um, what he wanted from life.

-My grandfather's dream for all of his kids was to go -- to go to college.

That was the dream 'cause my grandfather was a farmer.

And... Um... I think six out of eight went and graduated from college, uh, including my mother.

Um, so that was her goal was for me to go to college.

When it got to the point where she realized that college wasn't in the forefront of my mind, she had some money saved away and squirreled away, and she said, "Okay, you know, you want to do something, here's some cash."

And I went around town looking for a synthesizer.

So I have to say that it was a lot cheaper than me going to college.

[ Chuckles ] -Ladies and gentlemen, it's Grammy's 50th birthday and everybody's coming to the party.

-I was nominated, I realized it was a fluke that I was nominated.

And, you know, and it happened.

And I've been part of the Grammy system for a while, but not in the sense of, you know, putting forward tracks every year or albums every year or anything like that.

I, uh -- Uh -- I don't -- I-I don't feel that I have the personality to be in, um -- in a popularity contest.

[ Chatter ] -I know you ain't making this one.

[ Laughter ] ♪♪ You're supposed to use your hips.

-No.

-Not your thing.

You're supposed to use your hips.

You know what I'm saying?

♪♪ -I remember when he got started.

Yeah.

-In the early years, he was a great attendant to his, uh, techno festival.

-If I can pat my feet to it, it's all right.

[ Laughter ] -All right, man.

-How's it going?

Oh, yeah.

Good to see you.

All right.

-How's it going?

-Uncle James.

-All right.

You all right?

-Hey, what's going on?

-You all right?

Okay.

Guys, I hope none of y'all got warrants, right?

[ Laughter ] -If we did, you're here to help.

-I turned 97.

-97.

Wow.

That's -- So you're on the road to 100.

What's the deal with your dancing?

-I was dancing there, man.

Get down.

Hey.

-Don't do the split.

Don't do the split.

-I've never been much of a dancer.

When I was a kid, I used to want to be -- I used to, like, try to break dance and stuff.

But I wasn't really good at it.

And, uh... -[ Indistinct ] ...break dance.

-That's my generation, yeah.

And other than that, I have no idea how to dance.

I'm always playing music, and never on the floor.

-Never get out on the floor yourself.

-Never get out on the floor.

-Always here.

-Oh, man.

[ Chatter ] -Me split?

No way!

Nah, nah.

The hernia.

[ Laughs ] I can't do it 'cause of the hernia!

[ Laughs ] -Since Carl has done his thing, it broadened me.

It broadened his mother the same way.

That we, uh -- Carl's adventure has been our adventure too.

[ Chuckles ] You know, in all the different places that he had been.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Crowd cheering ] -Detroit Love, baby.

-I said Detroit Love!

[ Crowd cheering ] -Give it up for Mister Carl Craig!

-I can't believe it!

What do you say about the sound?

-Look, You know, I mean, I was up here killing myself, so I can't tell you.

I was just like... -Okay, okay, okay.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -[ Chuckles ] No, I'm not gonna fall, Trace.

So this is for everybody who can't make it to see anything like this yet.

I'm sure you'll make it.

Keep the faith.

Back when I started deejaying, I never thought I would be... able to come up here and play gigs and come and enjoy the glory of God's earth.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I hate having these congested sinuses 'cause my ears close up.

It makes you really not want to do anything.

And my situation or any DJ situation is, uh, impacted, of course, because, you know, you gotta -- you gotta work with your ears, you know?

So it can end up... like, really not having a good experience.

So having to listen through congested -- congestion and... standing in DJ booth for six hours.

Just miserable.

I just want to be in my bed.

But I gotta get ready for the party.

♪♪ ♪♪ -When I walk into the club, there's a solitude to it that I like.

It's hearing the music from how the subwoofers respond to the room and how it responds to where I am, how quickly the sounds bounce back from the wall.

So it goes from the speaker and it goes all around the room, the way -- the way sound does.

But in my mind, I hear the response of how it hits that back wall or how it comes back to me.

People who come specifically to see me, I hope they know to expect that I'm going to first try to find my footing.

And then second, I'm going to try to push it.

And then third, I'm going to bring it in to where it becomes more arty and more interesting and adventurous.

And I do that because I don't know the people that's in the room.

So maybe I have to play some things that might put us on the same level.

And then I can put it where we can all dance together.

And then I can go and then make it where, you know, we're going to go through the jungle and the wildness, and I'm taking you on this journey.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ] When I play and finish, I feel satisfied.

So if I finish the night, it's 5:00 in the morning, and you know, I have a drink or a couple of drinks with the people who are left, and then we say goodbye, then I feel like I'm done.

When I get to the hotel, my ears are ringing and you can't order any food because the kitchen's not open yet.

And it's all this angst.

That's what I have to deal with before maybe having to get up to catch, you know, uh, transfer at 9:00 to go catch a plane to go to the next place.

♪♪ I'm a specialist at what I do and if I don't do it, what am I a specialist in?

So I have to pursue my craft.

And my craft is something that not only feeds my family, but it feeds my -- my emotions.

It feeds me as an artist.

My problems with tinnitus are from when I was a kid.

I just always listened to loud music, it's always been some sort of ringing there.

And sometimes you have to push through it and find ways of recovering so that I can go right back out there and do it again the next day.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Party/After-Party is the experience of myself put into a piece of work that is showing here at MOCA, at Museum of Contemporary Art in LA.

The piece itself I designed for Dia Beacon, uh, in the basement.

And uh, while I was designing the piece, I had to consider the, um, the echo, the reverb in the room itself.

-We went to Dia Beacon.

We spent time in the spaces and we went down back to the city that evening, after spending the whole day together, thinking about what could be possible.

He started to talk about the tinnitus that he suffers from.

And you know, when he goes back into his hotel room, the white noise and the TV and the after-party for him isn't an after-party.

It's this transition into... really kind of coming down from the evening, from performing and being within and really having the sort of resonance of his tinnitus.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It's a really interesting duality of this sort of up of a performance, of elevating a whole room of people, um, every evening or when you're touring to then retreating to being by yourself in solitude in your hotel room.

And that reckoning of what you give and that depletion that you feel after.

-This installation is breaking down a barrier, you know.

This music is a Black cultural force.

And it wasn't acknowledged in America as a Black cultural force.

In America, it was perceived as a white European thing.

Everybody was into Chemical Brothers.

They were into all those bands.

You know, all the British bands got way more press, got way more exposure.

Um, Carl's innovations got overlooked.

They got written about.

But, you know, he got better reception like every other generation of African American musician before him.

He got more recognition in Europe.

That's all changed.

For him to come out of music and make this amazing installation, and for the installation to be about one of the most intimate things in his life, it was a special moment.

It's not just a special moment, I think, for us understanding him as a human being first and foremost, as a suffering human being, as a person overcoming his own obstacles.

But also for Black music from Detroit.

He's taken it and he's elevated it to as high in the society as is possible.

And that, for me, was a breakthrough.

♪♪ ♪♪ -We got the most beautiful people in the world standing in front of us right now.

[ Crowd cheering ] -Whatup doe!

Whatup doe!

Hey, man, they want me to describe, uh, Mr.

Legendary Carl Craig.

[ Crowd cheering ] Nah, I don't know how to describe this brother, but on the short notice situation I can imagine some of the well-known Detroit artists, from Kevin Saunderson to the Juan Atkins, to Derrick.

And the list goes on and on.

I would imagine throwing that in a cup.

Put some Silver Apples in that blend.

They're from New York.

I don't know if you know about that.

I will say throw in -- throw in some Kraftwerks, [ Crowd cheering ] You know how to describe this brother, put it in your in your mix, throw some tequila in there.

[ Cheers and applause ] You know.

And then, you got to -- you got to seize a little Detroit there.

I know it's tough.

It's tough.

But you don't have to pick-- Just a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, a little bit of Derrick in there.

But let me tell you somethin'.

I'm going to tell you somethin'.

And then you mix it up and you pour you a nice glass of Carl Craig.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Birds chirping ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Woman singing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -My mother had a church that she built in her backyard.

And she wanted to help people.

That's what what her mission was, was helping people.

-Even though my grandfather was the male preacher, it was really my grandmother who had the the strongest impact in that church.

She was the leader, um, called Mother Ward.

I don't ever remember her telling me I couldn't go into church and play instruments, because while I was down there, when I wake up, I just walk down to the church, open the door, go in and start banging on the drums or, you know, playing a organ.

They had a little guitar that might have had only three strings on it or something.

And I'm playing in that empty concrete structure with these, you know, I don't know where they got the wood benches from, but they had, you know, pews that lined the church that, you know, I doubt if that church was ever half full.

But it felt great to be in there to, maybe I run around and strut around with the guitar like I'm Prince or something, which would be blasphemous anyway, because I'm in church.

But, uh, that was -- that was -- it was incredible.

And, uh, the lady who used to get the Holy Ghost, she would be in there sometimes when I'm playing the organ and I say, "Yeah, I made up a new song," and and she'd go, "Oh, yeah, that was really good."

And I'm sure she was thinking, "This boy, Goddamn, what is he doing in here desecrating [laughs] God's instruments?"

Maybe that could also be part of why I like playing an empty club.

Starting the day and getting my own thing was when I would be in that church by myself and just really get into my own thing.

♪♪ -Carl learned from mother how to care about people.

Probably the love that Carl felt, helped him develop his music.

♪♪ I can't separate what is going on with him while I'm listening to his music.

I feel the love that I have for my son.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Music softens ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪