Techno Pioneer Juan Atkins Passes Away at 64 Years Old

Tragic news struck the family, friends, and fans of Juan Atkins. His management company, Green Smith Artists, revealed that the Detroit techno pioneer passed away at 64 years old. Currently, the cause of death is yet to be revealed. He was slated to perform on Halloween in Mexico City at the Yu Yu Club.

Atkins is largely credited as one of the founders of techno music. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, he attributed local DJ The Electrifyin’ Mojo as foundational to his taste and the work he would eventually create.

“Mojo really had a lot of impact on music in Detroit. He used to play a lot of German and British imports,” Juan Atkins recalled to Music Technology Magazine in 1988. “The first place I heard Kraftwerk was on his show, in ’78 or ’79. He’d play anything from the B52s to Jimi Hendrix to Kraftwerk, Peter Frampton. . . all kinds of stuff.”

It was Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder that stuck with him the most, particularly the latter’s work with Donna Summer that would inform his tastes. Then, he would eventually implement the funk records Mojo would play on the radio and combine the two to introduce our understanding of Detroit Techno.

Juan Atkins Left Behind a Massive Legacy in The World of Techno

“He played all the Parliament and Funkadelic that anybody ever wanted to hear. Those two groups were really big in Detroit at the time,” Atkins added. “In fact, they were one of the main reasons why disco didn’t really grab hold in Detroit in ’79. Mojo used to playa lot of funk just to be different from all the other stations that had gone over to disco. When ‘Knee Deep’ came out, that just put the last nail in the coffin of disco music.”

Early in his career, Juan Atkins joined Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson as part of the Belleville Three. Together, they would go on to craft the sound of Detroit techno. Atkins in particular helped create groups like Cybotron and Borderland and would eventually coin the term “techno” entirely.

He remained a force in techno until his last days. As decades went on, Juan Atkins made it a point to give the genre something more than just beats to dance to. “I make social statements. My lyrics are supposed to make you think about something other than shaking your booty on the dance floor and falling in love. I feel like artists have an obligation to say something meaningful,” he told The Guardian in 2024.

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