black-history

Season 4 – Episode 1: The Scene, The Hippest Show in Detroit in the 70s and 80s

Black Detroiters were invisible on local TV then . . . ‘The Scene’ changed it all    The low-budget, upstart and, to some, shocking dance show on a pioneering African-American-owned TV station put a screenful of Detroit teenagers on the air every day. If you were of an age in the 1970s and 1980s, you watched….

Read More

Season 3 – Episode 05: Far from New Orleans, Long Before Motown, Jazz Became Detroit’s Pulse

The magnet of good-paying factory jobs and the nurturing influence of an excellent public school music program helped make Detroit a hotbed of jazz and the hometown of many internationally famous musicians. This edition of Detroit History Podcast takes a look at when and how and why Detroit’s music began to swing, and how generations…

Read More

Season 2 – Episode 05: John Lee Hooker And The Blues on Hastings Street

Bluesman John Lee Hooker’s recording career spanned more than 40 years — from his hit record, Boogie Chillen’, which was recorded in Detroit in 1948, to his Grammy Award-winning LP The Healer. Hooker is a total product of Detroit’s Black Bottom, the city’s African-American neighborhood. We track his career, with help from John Lee Hooker’s…

Read More

Season 1 – Episode 09: The Birth And Growth Of Detroit Techno

If Detroit was a sound, what would that sound be? Although some would say Motown, others say that sound would be Techno music. In this episode of The Detroit History Podcast we explain the birth of Techno in the 1980s, why its popular around the world — particularly Berlin… and why it’s as relevant now…

Read More