Detroit Electronic Music Festival - History

History

The first electronic music festival held in Detroit was the 1994 World Party, established by Carol Marvin and her company, Pop Culture Media, with partners Dave Cooper and Kurt Martin. Marvin had previously been a sponsorship organizer for the Ford Detroit International Jazz Festival and Detroit-Montreux Jazz Festival, and she and Cooper and Martin had been producers of the 1993 Michigan State Fair. The World Party was intended to give Detroit and its overlooked history of electronic music major exposure both locally and nationally, and was timed and named to take advantage of the World Cup soccer tournament, part of which was being held in Pontiac, Michigan the same month. The event featured a long list of headline artists (including Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Carl Cox, and Richie Hawtin, and was held at the Joe Louis Arena in downtown Detroit. The event was held on a scorching hot day, and through malfeisance or system failure, the arena was very hot inside. Attendance was low and the event lost money, but the World Party established the idea of a celebration of electronic music in Detroit.

It took until 2000 for Marvin to launch the next attempt, the Detroit Electronic Music Festival. For 2000, Carl Craig, hired by Carol Marvin to act as "Artistic Director", booked a diverse range of the talent, with big internationally recognized names to lesser-known local talent, like the World Party. Patterned on high-profile dance music festivals in Europe, the DEMF had free admission and attracted many international attendees.

Each festival since the World Party has been held at Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit, and has been sanctioned and financially supported by the City of Detroit. The city's support for the festival has been seen by many as the first high-profile acknowledgment and celebration of the city as the birthplace of techno music.