Juan Atkins is generally recognized as one of the creators of techno music, which spawned a whole group of genres now known as electronica, and he was probably the first person to apply the word "techno" to music. His novel electronic soundscapes influenced nearly every genre of music that came after. Despite recognition in the form of an exhibition at the Detroit Historical Museum, he remains among the most obscure of modern musical pioneers. Techno music originated in Detroit, Michigan, and it was there that Atkins was born on September 12, 1962. Fans worldwide associate the music with Detroit's often bleak landscape, littered with abandoned buildings and other relics of the roaring 1920s and the golden age of the automobile. Atkins himself shared his impressions of Detroit's desolate core with techno historian Dan Sicko: "I was smack in the middle of downtown, on Griswold. I was looking at this building and I see the faded imprint of American Airline [a logo], the shadow after they took the sign down. It just brought home to me the thing about Detroit—in any other city you have a buzzing, thriving downtown."
But the true beginnings of techno took place a half hour's drive to the southwest in Belleville, Michigan, a small town near an interstate leading to Detroit's central city. Atkins and his brother were sent there to live with his grandmother after his grades dropped in Detroit, in the hopes of removing him from the city's violence. As a junior high and high school student in Belleville, Atkins met Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, both techno pioneers. The trio made trips into Detroit for parties on the weekends. Later they became known as the "Belleville Three," with Atkins, according to Sicko, receiving special mention as "Obi Juan."
