Hart beats: An oral history of the first Detroit Electronic Music Festival

If you were there … you know.

Twenty-five years ago, in an underdog moment that soon turned transcendent, the Detroit Electronic Music Festival came to life at Hart Plaza to celebrate techno, the homegrown genre that had been reshaping music across the globe.

The inaugural DEMF weathered seat-of-the-pants financing, last-minute marketing and plenty of initial skepticism. It nearly didn't happen. But on the weekend of May 27, 2000, the scrappy fest blossomed on the riverfront to become a uniquely defining piece of Detroit culture.

Programmed by artist and renaissance man Carl Craig, produced by events veteran Carol Marvin, the DEMF was sparked in part by a concept from charismatic techno pioneer Derrick May.

It launched a Memorial Day tradition in the heart of the city, still revived each spring.

With 50 artists at Hart Plaza and an impromptu swarm of late-night parties across the city, the 2000 DEMF lit up Detroit on what had previously been a low-key holiday weekend. The free festival drew people from across the world. They were fans who revered Detroit as a pilgrimage, suddenly dancing alongside the city’s longtime techno community and curious locals.

"We want people to be able to stumble onto a new universe with a nucleus at Hart Plaza," Craig told the Free Press before the event.

In retrospect, even the date was fitting for a techno adventure: It was the year 2000, the cusp of the new millennium and all the futuristic imagery that entailed.

But the DEMF — launched when the most cutting-edge device for most folks meant a flip phone — wasn’t just some high-tech odyssey. As imaginatively captured in the festival’s Thom Thewes-designed poster, it was deeply Detroit, all city soul and machine muscle.

The fest presented diverse talent across four stages, including techno pioneers such as Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and May. They had been stars overseas. Now they were finally getting their hometown flowers.

The latter two would go on to produce their own versions of the festival before operations were assumed in 2006 by the Detroit company Paxahau, which continues to stage it under the now well-established Movement name. The 2025 edition will hit Hart Plaza next weekend.

The DEMF was the first civic-sanctioned electronic music festival in the country, boldly undertaken in the face of mainstream misgivings about rave culture, initially shared by some in Detroit city hall.

Those concerns turned out to be unfounded as artists, fans and city leaders came together for a weekend of uplift. The DEMF was bright and creative, thrusting the underground mantra of “PLUR” onto Hart Plaza: peace, love, unity, respect.

Alongside the new downtown development percolating at the time, including Comerica Park and Ford Field, the 2000 DEMF was a cultural inflection point for the Detroit revival we know today.

Despite drama that would briefly crop up the next few years — financial issues, personnel shake-ups, resistance to corporate sponsors — that first DEMF has a pristine place, warmly remembered as a triumphant moment.

Here’s how it happened.

History should probably log Detroit’s techno festival as a collective invention. Many claim credit for the idea, and who-first-approached-who remains murky. The concept had been “flying around” town for years, says Carl Craig.

But this much is indisputable: With their growing experience at big European festivals, Detroit’s top DJs had begun envisioning a hometown equivalent. Carol Marvin, meanwhile, was an events professional who had produced the World Party at Joe Louis Arena — a techno concert tied to the 1994 World Cup — and handled fundraising for Detroit’s annual Labor Day jazz fest.

By 1998, with DJ Derrick May as point man, Craig and Marvin were officially linked up.

CARL CRAIG (techno musician and DEMF artistic director): Derrick and I had been talking about festivals. Everyone in Detroit wanted to see something like that happen. Electronic music, dance, techno, house, whatever you call it — it was time for our generation to play our music and serenade the city.

Derrick is the one who brought in Carol, but then he stepped out. Derrick and I brought the idea; Carol is the one who would bring it to the city.

The festival (wound up) rushed at the last minute. But it really took more than a year for it to come to fruition.

Carl Craig at the Detroit Electronic Music Festival in Detroit on May 28, 2000.

DERRICK MAY (Detroit techno artist): My original idea was to turn Detroit’s warehouse district into a fiesta of clubs for a weekend. I always thought that area could be a wonderful festival environment where people could walk from place to place, enjoying different music and food happening in one stretch. That was my dream, and I was going to call it Movement.

ADRIEL THORNTON (DEMF Artist Relations Manager): A lot of promoters in the city had an idea — maybe not on this scale — of doing something. Daytime parties had started happening at Kennedy Square, and a bunch of us were buzzing about the “what if” of Hart Plaza. I wasn’t savvy enough at the time to do it. I knew the rave world, but didn’t have the connections to approach the city.

Carol had saved the jazz festival with her fundraising. As a fan of electronic music, she wanted to do this. She had the lines to funding and found herself in a unique position to take on her own festival.

She asked me for (suggestions of) people who might serve as artistic director, and Carl’s name was one of a few.

MAY: She needed a figure next to her who was part of the community. Carl was young. (As my understudy), he wanted to impress me, and he wanted to impress the city. He wanted to do something good. His heart was in the right place.

Carl took the bold-ass step that maybe I would have never taken. Maybe I would have procrastinated for years about doing this.

May says he was put off at times by the “extremely overzealous” Marvin, who tended to operate “fast and furious.” Still, he respected her foresight.

MAY: She was already thinking in terms of a large event. She had a vision of what she wanted to do in the city. I’ll give her credit for that.

Carol was young. She was determined. She had been through some serious illness, and this was her second chance at life. This woman had made a point that she was going to live her life to the fullest.

Carl didn’t know what was going to happen next. He and Carol were building an understanding of how they would do business, which I was not involved in. I was there to support Carl. To that point, I had been his big brother.

THORNTON: Carol had to go through some things with the city. Robert McCabe with the jazz fest was important in co-signing her and connecting her with people at the Recreation Department, who became really strong advocates. Mr. McCabe really helped push it to the powers-that-be.

PHIL TALBERT (former Detroit Recreation Department executive): In 1999, Carol Marvin set up an appointment to talk about an event. She presented this concept of a “Detroit Electronic Music Festival.” I knew absolutely nothing about electronic music, but we were looking for an event focused to young people.

She put together some videos from electronic festivals in Europe. When I saw those — I mean, these (DJs) were like rock stars. That was the population we were looking for in terms of demographics and age. 

Doubts, pushback as holiday tradition is quietly born

Early brainstorming about the proposed techno event brought a decision now etched onto Detroit's cultural calendar: Memorial Day weekend was picked as the target date.

MAY: I’m pretty sure that was Carol’s idea. It was a brilliant choice.

THORNTON: Carol was thinking above and beyond — that because it was a holiday, this could be more than a simple weekend-type thing.

TALBERT: A lot of it had to do with date availability. There was nothing happening on Memorial Day (at Hart Plaza), so it was open on the schedule. But it also had to do with when other electronic festivals were happening around the world.

CRAIG: Why not do it during a holiday weekend? We couldn't do Labor Day weekend because that was the jazz festival. Fourth of July wouldn’t have happened either. So what other times made sense? Memorial weekend just did.  

By summer 1999, Marvin was assembling a team behind the scenes, including several jazz fest veterans. Momentum was quietly building, but tricky bureaucratic hoops remained. She submitted her formal proposal to Detroit officials, seeking a three-year deal with $338,000 annually in city support.

TALBERT: I met with (recreation) director Ernest Burkeen because he’d have to come up with that initial money and get sign-off from the mayor’s office.

We decided this was something we wanted to move forward on. We looked at the budget and decided we would talk to the mayor’s office about forwarding that agreement through.

JEFF WILSON (DEMF Director of Operations): Carol is the one who fought for it hard with the city and the council. There were hurdles. All the pieces were in place. It was just about getting that green light.

GREG BOWENS (Detroit mayoral spokesman): We thought this could be a global thing. These guys were stars internationally. 

Mayor (Dennis) Archer understood the opportunity: connecting to a global audience whose industry was rooted in a Detroit invention — techno music — presented to the city.

Still, the festival idea encountered resistance from many at city hall.

THORNTON: There was fear of this, that and the other. In the rave world, we were getting a lot of resistance from DPD and others who didn’t understand it. And not just in Detroit. They didn’t know how to separate music culture from drug culture. … It was infuriating to have those things connected, not acknowledging that this music was born here and had been celebrated here for years.

TALBERT: Raves were really hot in the media at the time. There was a lot of negativity — late nights, drugs, all that stuff.

BILL McCONICO (fan): Coming out of the ’90s, the rave scene had gotten a little ridiculous. Ecstasy was just starting. There was a fear: We don’t want some kids to take something, have a problem in Hart Plaza, and then Detroit gets a black eye.

EDDIE FOWLKES (Detroit techno DJ): A lot of people in the mayor’s administration didn’t understand the origins of this, which was really the neighborhoods. They just thought: “illegal raves and drugs.” That’s not what it was.

BOWENS: There were the usual concerns about safety. But I said: “These are house (music) heads. It’s not going to attract a rowdy element.” And it was going to be free, which had always been a tradition at Hart Plaza.

CRAIG: There was some controversy in the parks department about trash. So my dad and I had a meeting with (mayoral executive) Lisa Webb Sharpe, and I played her all the music. From what I understand, she then went to the deputy mayor and said, “OK, this has to happen.”

That took us over the finish line after some serious opposition.

TALBERT: We didn’t want any negativity. There were a lot of challenges, a lot of discussions in the mayor’s office. After a number of meetings, it was ultimately decided to move forward.

WILSON: It came together around Labor Day (1999) and grew through October and November. Once it got going, it was all hands on deck.

MAY: I was outside working on my patio, and Carl comes running up: “We’re doing it! We’re doing your dream. We’re doing the festival.” All I could say is: “Well, if you’re doing it, then I’m doing it.”

The Electrifying Mojo plays a role

By fall 1999, techno insiders around Detroit had caught wind a festival was in the works. The plan was confirmed in December by the alt-weekly magazine Real Detroit: Carol Marvin and Carl Craig aimed to put on “the biggest party of the new millennium,” a headline read.

Charged with curating the artist lineup, Craig was now phoning contacts locally and around the globe.

His approach to DEMF programming had several inspirations, including Switzerland’s Montreux Jazz Festival and the global flavor of Detroit’s Grand Prix. But no influence weighed more than the Electrifying Mojo, the enigmatic Detroit radio personality whose eclectic nighttime shows had helped shape and promote techno music.

Carol Marvin, left, and Carl Craig, pictured on a December 1999 cover of Real Detroit, an alternative weekly paper.

CRAIG: That was the vision: to show that the roots of the music isn’t just somebody strumming a guitar or banging on some drums or scratching or whatever, but that music comes from unexpected sources. And then on top of that, having my influences and my friends.

I wanted to make sure that enough of the Electrifying Mojo's vision was in my vision of the festival. That's why I felt that we had to have rap, we had to have electro, we had to have people on the edge.

(It was about) the music he got Detroit dancing to every night. He was probably the greatest influence for me in putting together a lineup.

KEN COCKREL (former Detroit City Councilman): There were limited outlets for the music at the time, but it always had a very passionate and dedicated audience in Detroit. The music has probably always been bigger in Europe and other parts of the world. So it was important to see these guys who were the founding fathers — in almost like a homecoming — to get recognition from their hometown, in their hometown, in a way they never had before.

CRAIG: The first time I went to the Sonar festival in Barcelona, I noticed they were doing stuff that was experimental, and I felt we had enough to do that, too. So for the first day at the (DEMF’s) underground stage, I wanted guys making sounds with power saws, electronic machinery, mixing it in with electronic music.

In Detroit, if you work on a factory line, there is the rhythm of the electric machine, the rhythm of things we do every day. Juan Atkins has said he was influenced by Ford’s factories and the automation.

But Craig himself wouldn’t be performing — in fact, he wouldn’t play the Hart Plaza fest until 2003.

CRAIG: I didn’t want to take spots away from anybody. I’m still happy with that decision. I’ve seen so many times where people just want to hype themselves. That wasn’t my goal. My goal was: This is going to be a festival as (great) as any around the world. We have enough Detroit talent, and I have enough say in putting together the lineup that my fingerprint is on it.

MAY: He was doing what he thought was right for the music. That may not have been understood by a lot of people. Few people knew Carl well. He wasn’t the figurehead he would become later in life. His ambition was not to be famous or get paid. He was just trying to put the music where it belonged. He knew it was my dream and he thought he was doing something that would benefit us all.

So we all stood behind him.

With Memorial Day weekend looming, the early months of 2000 were frantic. Even as artists were booked and production plans locked in, Marvin and company didn’t yet have their promised $338,000 from the city.

The festival date was in jeopardy, and “there was discussion of delaying,” says Craig.

CRAIG: It was up in the air whether it should (get moved) to later, because we were running at the dead end of everything. You know, any festival could end up like the Fyre Festival (a famously doomed 2017 Caribbean event). I mean, it could. And that’s just an ugly truth, unless you have the millions of dollars up front. When you’re scrambling for that money at the last minute … it could’ve been a wreck. 

THORNTON: It wasn’t a scramble, per se. It just seemed like the closer it got, the bigger it became. There were people saying: “This isn’t going to work. You shouldn’t do it.” Realistically, Carol was the only person I talked to who really believed this was going to be as massive as it was.

The city was putting Carol through some things at the last minute. I remember them asking for a new insurance rider. She had to mortgage her house to make it happen.

WILSON: One big thing that really helped us is that the Downtown Hoedown was happening the week before (Memorial Day) at Hart Plaza. So we made an arrangement with them to keep the main stage in place. We’d just have to put up our (three) side stages.

After several delays, the festival’s official public announcement was hastily arranged: a May 1 media event to reveal plans. The world would finally be introduced to the Detroit Electronic Music Festival and its 50-artist roster — with an open-arms invitation to international fans.

The festival was 3½ weeks away.  

(Detroit Free Press, May 2, 2000): “Information about the DEMF and its lineup was announced in a news conference Monday morning in the 13th-floor auditorium of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center. The event featured swirling lights, two DJs playing techno, and young, black-clad artists and writers making conversation with older, suited representatives from City Hall.”

BARB DEYO (DEMF publicist): People were still skeptical — “Mmm-hmm, we’ll see, good luck.” That’s how it felt. A lot of the media was hands-off, waiting to see. I don’t think they understood what would happen and the magnitude of the worldwide press that would be paying attention.

STACY OSBAUM (Urb magazine editor, April 2000 Free Press interview): "We see it as being a potentially landmark event. I just hope it turns out as well as it promises to."

CRAIG: I think Detroiters were used to hearing about big ideas that never happened.

DEYO: I didn’t have a computer, didn’t have email. I remember driving over to (May’s company) Transmat, getting a floppy disk with a photo of Derrick, and running it over to the Free Press on deadline.

Everything was a hard copy, a phone call, a personal communication. We had street teams flyering cars. It was word of mouth more than anything.

MAY: How the word got around so quick still baffles me.

JOHN COLLINS (Detroit DJ): There was this anticipation. People were saying: “Are they going to come? Are they going to come?”

I had been traveling and doing festivals overseas years prior to DEMF. It just made so much sense to have a festival in Detroit. People around the world love the music from Detroit. I knew they were going to show up.

On May 24, three days before the DEMF’s scheduled launch — and with setup already well underway at the riverfront — Detroit City Council finally approved the fest’s $338,000 in a unanimous vote.

DEYO: We got the check from the city at like 3:45 p.m., and suddenly I’m bolting across Hart Plaza like the Bionic Woman in my stiletto boots and backpack to get it to Carl so it could get deposited.

We had already been moving forward as if this was going to happen. But we didn’t know. It was down to the wire.

Carol Marvin submitted her formal proposal to Detroit officials, seeking a three-year deal with $338,000 annually in city support for the Detroit Electronic Music Festival.

THORNTON: As we got closer, the excitement was really ramping up. Hotels were starting to fill up. It was like, “Oh, so people are coming in from out of town.” That was my first inkling this was taking on a life of its own. It was magical to watch, but from my perspective also a little scary. Being part of it, you don’t know how it’s going to go.

WILSON: I don’t think I left the plaza all week. I slept there each night. This was a new thing. We didn’t know what would happen.

In what has remained a techno-fest tradition, setup at Hart Plaza included art installations, spearheaded in 2000 by Craig's assistant, Tim Price.

DEYO: A lot of things weren’t budgeted for. There was an installation at the underground stage that looked like stained glass, really beautiful. Tim was very visual and very creative.

WILSON: The DEMF had this edge to it. We used the (logistics) playbook of our other big events, but the magic and the spice wasn’t the infrastructure. It was the music and culture that made it unique.

When you walked in off Jefferson Avenue, there were a bunch of TVs stacked on top of each other with the word “DEMF” and static. Tim Price had grabbed some of his techno heads to hit all the thrift shops around Detroit. It had that organic art-installation feel. Little things like that made it more grassroots.

MAY: It was quite powerful and incredible how it came together. And none of us were prepared for the impact.

Against the odds, a dream comes to life

Saturday, opening day, started gloomy. Rain drenched Hart Plaza, ahead of a scheduled performances by signature Detroit names such as Theo Parrish, Mike Grant, Kenny Larkin and Recloose.

STEVE BYRNE (former Free Press entertainment editor): It was about an hour before the first performance of the first day of the fest. I was with two friends — one deeply enmeshed in the music and one really connected to the music and Detroit techno culture. We decided to take a longish walk through downtown, and on the way stopped to visit one of their friends — someone I didn't know at all, but later learned was a major force in the music.

These people really knew their stuff.

The four of us talked for a bit, and I remember only one thing from that conversation: No one had any real idea of what to expect from the festival, and an egg-on-the-face failure seemed a distinct possibility.

So we got to Hart Plaza right around noon. The music was on, but it was nearly vacant. Just nobody there.

Of course, slow-starting Saturdays later became almost a tradition for the festival. But at that moment, it was like, “Uh-oh, this thing is going to bomb.”

WILSON: It was rainy all morning. But once that cloud cleared early in the afternoon, there was suddenly this mad crowd pouring in, like out of the woodwork.

Dancers at the Detroit Electronic Music Festival at Hart Plaza in Detroit on May 28, 2000.

TALBERT: By that Saturday night, we knew we had it. To keep things safe, we had set up these ID booths (for drinks), with staffers from parks and rec manning them. We started to realize these (attendees) weren’t all from here. They were from France, England, Germany, other states.

That was one of the big discussions Ernest and I had: The city should pay big dollars for a concept, some big theme, so we could change how people looked at Detroit. 

The city wasn’t viewed favorably then. So when these young folks were coming from around the world, whether staying in a hotel, a motel, a car or someone’s backyard, it could change how Detroit was seen internationally.

BOWENS: I remember the feeling of celebrating something uniquely Detroit and the opportunity DEMF represented — visitors, press and business from across the globe coming to the D. 

This was bigger than the international Grand Prix in the sense that regular folks, Detroit folks, wouldn't just be sitting in a grandstand next to a racing fan from Italy watching cars zip by. We were in a totally immersive, musical experience, dancing with people from around the world at a giant free party.

Among the fans piling into Hart Plaza was young attorney Bill McConico, a longtime techno enthusiast and today the chief judge at Detroit’s 36th District Court. On that day in May 2000, he now confesses, he illegally parked in an alley near the Pontchartrain Hotel as downtown swelled with DEMF traffic.

McCONICO: I didn’t have a lot of money at time — I was able to buy two cups of Jungle Juice and a corn dog. But you got there and stayed. I ran into people from high school, my neighborhood, and DJs I hadn’t seen in six or seven years. There were a lot of hugs. This was like our secret getting out to the world.

MAY: Families came with their babies and strollers. It was grandmothers, homeless people, skateboarders. The old guys were there playing chess during the festival. It was beautiful, man. It was the city of Detroit in all its colors and flavors.

WILSON: That first year was very grassroots. Each artist had their own following there.

Carl Craig hustles on the main stage during the second day of the inaugural Detroit Electronic Music Festival at Hart Plaza, May 28, 2000.

FOWLKES:  One of my uncles came down. I was surprised to see him there. He said: “Well, it was free. I wanted to come down and see what the hell you do.” 

It wasn’t just another gig. You had family members finally getting to see you perform. It was an opportunity for our families to respect this Detroit art, this first big thing after Motown. And I met a lot of other artists’ family members too: “This is my uncle, this is my grandmother.” You’d see their whole clan over there hollering and jumping. That’s the part I really enjoyed.

THORNTON: You’d be walking around and out of the blue, there’s someone suddenly breakdancing in the middle of a crowd. It was striking. There were a lot of folks I knew from the scene, but there were so many other people, too, partying together, having random conversations: “So this is techno.” It was those moments that made it for me.

Against the odds, the DEMF had burst to life. By Saturday evening, Hart Plaza was packed, throbbing with bodies and booming beats.

Just before 9 p.m., with the sun setting behind him at the main stage, longtime DJ Stacey Pullen began working up a mix atop a spare Detroit techno beat, soon accompanying it with Martin Luther King Jr.’s best-known words: “I have a dream today!”

(Brian McCollum, Detroit Free Press, May 30, 2000): “Historians will tell you Detroit techno arrived in the mid-1980s, the work of progressive black kids with an ear for electronics and funk. But those of us with romantic notions will look back at a moment that's a bit more poetic: 8:50 Saturday night.”

DEYO: That “I Have a Dream” moment on the first night — I still get chills. I was standing across the bowl, looking at this crowd, and there was Stacey Pullen. It was magical.

THORNTON: When that speech was played, Carol and I looked at each other. We were celebrating: “We did it!” It was an unbelievable feeling.

I never thought we’d see this at Hart Plaza — this throng of people from the stage to the river. It put the city in a whole different light. As a fan of this music and an event producer, I hoped we had crossed the threshold of general understanding and acceptance of my culture and lifestyle.  

CRAIG: It was an excellent, excellent moment for Detroit.

DJ Stacey Pullen at the Detroit Electronic Music Festival in Detroit on May 27, 2000.

DEMF's opening day had been a victory, and Detroit's first techno festival was suddenly on the wider radar.

CRAIG: The mayor was so excited about that first night, he decided to come by.

TALBERT: The next morning, we got a call from Lisa Webb Sharpe: “The mayor wants to stop through.” There had been no major issues for police, no major medical situations. So the mayor came down Sunday and walked through the crowd. Young people recognized him, coming up to say, “Thanks for doing this for us!” We knew we had something that resonated with young people.

He made his way through the crowd down to the Pyramid Stage, where they were doing some old-school mixing, and leaned against a light pole, just bopping his head. I said, “Well, we’ve got the mayor, too.” It was so cool.

WILSON: Dennis Archer got onstage: “We got this done! Now we build for the future.” 

DEYO: (As publicist), I had called Rolling Stone magazine before the festival. They said, “No, sorry, we don’t cover stuff like that.”

On Sunday night at 10 o’clock, I got a phone call from a photographer in Chicago. He said: “I don’t have (festival) credentials, and you might not believe me, but I just got a call from Rolling Stone to get myself to Detroit.” It was because of all the great press Sunday morning about that first day.

DEMF weekend also spawned a phenomenon that has remained a feature of festival weekend: an array of late-night music and dance parties across the city.

CRAIG: The afterparties took over in a way that I never really expected, because I was so used to having to close the club at 2 a.m. Parties going on for two days is something I never in my wildest dreams imagined. The first time I saw it was (that weekend) at Richie Hawtin’s party at City Club, with a line of people until 8 in the morning waiting to get in. It just blew my mind.

WILSON: The afterparties might have been even more important to the artists — with the festival at Hart Plaza almost like the cherry on top. The fans would be out all night, then get up to do it all over again.

CRAIG: The afterparties became important to the validation of the festival, and they were important for a lot of the people coming from overseas and out of town.

'We didn't know how big it could be'

In keeping with Craig’s vision, the rest of DEMF unfolded with musical diversity: from hip-hop’s Mos Def, the Roots and Slum Village to European performers like Aril Brikha alongside Detroit house and techno mainstays. For most Detroit performers, it was the biggest hometown platform yet.

T3 (Slum Village): It was an honor to be part of a celebration that's been going strong for 25 years. This was my first time performing at an event of this size — and we rocked that crowd! Grateful to witness 25 years of legacy, energy and unity in music … and even more grateful to still be here and part of it.

YOUNG RG (Slum Village): I remember being with my brothers backstage thinking they made it to the big stage, and I was extremely proud.

FOWLKES: I felt Detroit wasn’t ready for just constant DJ’ing, so I had a percussionist, a singer from Funkadelic, keyboards. It went down overwhelmingly because everybody came to my stage. I was doing tricks — I’d play “Planet Rock,” stop it, the man from Funkadelic would do his thing, Bill Beaver would sing. It seemed natural to have a DJ with a band, like a natural progression.

MAY: (The situation) was kind of hard to absorb. I was so focused on doing a good show. I didn’t have a great setup. It was bent over and the wind was blowing. It was rough.

I didn’t appreciate it until several days later when I sat with people and discussed it. It would be years before I even saw footage of that moment. Nobody had cellphone videos. Nothing.

Derrick May performs on the DEMF Stage during the inaugural Detroit Electronic Music Festival at Hart Plaza in Detroit on May 29, 2000.

McCONICO: This was the old-school (vibe) of the ’80s and early ’90s, like the block parties in Eastern Market. But it was bigger, it was us, it was a little chaotic. It wasn’t very polished, but it was raw, and that’s what made it so great.

FOWLKES: This was (the journey) from backyard parties to Hart Plaza. It was about the Black community that used to have to rent buildings to put on events.

JEFF TATE (fan): (Growing up), people would park their cars on the main lane at Belle Isle, turn up their radios at 10 o’clock when Electrifying Mojo came on, and dance to that music. Those events and yard parties were the precursor. Previously, it was spread out — at Belle Isle, Palmer Park, people just hanging out. Now it had congealed into something that really helped put Detroit on the map internationally.

McCONICO: It was organic, it was free, it was our music and our story, welcoming to everyone. It took on a life of its own. It really energized a lot of people in my generation to start getting back downtown.

As DEMF wound into its third and final evening, with closing sets to come from May and Richie Hawtin, organizers could finally take stock of what they had achieved.

Craig stood by the main stage that night, looking on with tears.

CRAIG: I was finally able to let my hair down and didn't have anything else to think about. Standing there with the UAW building, Cobo and Joe Louis in the background, then all these people in front of us with the Renaissance Center, it was just ... all the emotions. There were Umar Bin Hassan and Derrick playing this amazing tribal music with this revolutionary poetry on top.

And then Richie started off his set with that siren, and everybody just lost their shit.

People gather in front of the DEMF Stage during the inaugural Detroit Electronic Music Festival at Hart Plaza in Detroit on May 29, 2000.

RICHIE HAWTIN (2003 Free Press interview): I don’t know if there’s really words to describe being on stage with ... yeah, it’s hard to talk about ... with Kenny, Carl, Derrick and everyone there, looking up and seeing the RenCen and seeing all those people. It’s amazing. I don’t think any of us ever thought in our lifetime we would be there for that reason.

THORNTON: Literally and figuratively, we took this and brought it into the light. It gave us a starting point. People had no idea what techno parties on this scale could be. Seeing how important it was to folks all over the world — that changed the conversation and the dynamic of what this music is and means to us in Detroit. 

WILSON: Everybody still talks about that first year as surreal and magical. That's because we didn't know how big it could be.

CRAIG: I have people come up to this day to talk about that first year of the festival.

The truth of the matter is: That first year really was the best year. And I’m glad I was involved in making it happen. It was something the city needed when most people in the city didn’t even realize they needed it.

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or [email protected].