Detroit Electronic Music Festival facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Movement Electronic Music Festival |
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The crowd and main stage at the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, 2002
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| Genre | Electronic Dance Music, Techno |
| Dates | Memorial Day weekend (late May) |
| Location(s) | Detroit, Michigan, United States  |
| Years active | 2000 - present |
Movement Electronic Music Festival is an annual electronic dance music event held in the birthplace of Techno, Detroit, each Memorial Day weekend since 2006. Previous electronic music festivals held at Hart Plaza on Memorial Day weekend include Detroit Electronic Music Festival (2000–2002), Movement (2003–2004) and Fuse-In (2005). The four different festival names reflect completely separate and distinct producers, brands and directions. All of these festivals presented performances by musicians and DJs that emphasized the progressive qualities of the culture surrounding electronic music including the celebration of Detroit being the birthplace of the popular electronic music subgenre Techno.
In late 2013, the original DEMF management announced plans for the return of the Detroit Electronic Music Festival as a free-admission event at Campus Martius Park on Independence Day weekend, 2014, along with the paid-admission Federation of Electronic Music Technology (FEMT), a concurrent conference and music showcase at Ford Field. These events were later rescheduled for 2015. These events are not connected to the Movement Electronic Music Festival planned for Memorial Day weekend in Hart Plaza.
In 2017, Movement was nominated for Festival of the Year at the Electronic Music Awards.
Movement is scheduled to return on May 27-29, 2023 at Hart Plaza.
History
The first electronic music festival held in Detroit was the Detroit Electronic Music Festival in 2000, produced by Carol Marvin and her organization Pop Culture Media (which included long-time event producer Adriel Thornton, Telo Dunne and Barbara Deyo and others). Taking place in Detroit's Hart Plaza, it was a landmark event that brought visitors from all over the world to celebrate Techno music in the city of its birth. The event was one of the first electronic music festivals in the United States.
Ford Motor Company provided an unprecedented $435,000 for Title sponsorship of the 2001 event, which was renamed the Focus Detroit Electronic Music Festival. This allowed the free-of-charge event to continue to be a gift to the fans and made the festival a profitable venture in its second year. Festival producer Pop Culture Media, with Carol Marvin at the helm, worked with Ford to create a nationwide television ad campaign featuring the music of Detroit Techno founder Juan Atkins.
In January 2003, Detroit city Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick decided to override the Recreation Department (which controls and manages Hart Plaza) and secured Hart Plaza and the Memorial Day weekend dates for Derrick May, who had extensive experience as a touring DJ but no firsthand, large-scale festival production experience. May put a first class team in place, which included a donation by Philadelphia-based P.A.W.N. LASERS / Louis Capet XXVI, but the biggest hurdle faced by the Festival was the City Of Detroit's withdrawal of $350,000 funding that it had provided in previous years.
The second Movement festival took place in 2004, but despite its public success, the event faced significant financial losses and its fate became uncertain.
In February 2005, May announced his resignation as festival producer, and the festival once again changed hands. Fellow techno veteran Kevin Saunderson announced plans for a Movement replacement to be called Fuse-In Detroit (later shortened to just Fuse-In, with the tagline "Detroit's Electronic Movement") to be staged Memorial Day Weekend 2005.
Successful negotiations with city officials led to 2005 becoming the first year that an event in Hart Plaza did not have free admission. A total of 41,220 admission passes were sold to Fuse-In visitors. 38,382 daily passes were sold for $10 each, and 2,838 weekend passes, covering the full three days, were sold for $25 each. The City of Detroit collected $1 per pass, and was to have collected 30% of festival profits, but admission pass sales did not recoup the festival's $756,000 budget.
On February 16, 2006, Kevin Saunderson announced that due to financial losses and lack of sufficient promotion, he would not continue to produce the festival in 2006. Paxahau of Detroit, Michigan, an event production company that has worked with Craig, May, and Saunderson, secured the venue and dates from Saunderson to produce the festival under the name "Movement." Paxahau has been producing their festival from 2006 to present, celebrating their 10-year anniversary in 2016.
See also
- List of electronic music festivals
- Detroit International Jazz Festival
