Restoration Process and Timeline PHASE 1: ELECTRONIC ARCHAEOLOGY + ACTIVATION Since then, we have activated a team to oversee the restoration of the Sound System and, last spring, curated a booth to raise awareness for our efforts at Movement Music Festival 2018. Late in 2017, we hired a vendor to survey damage to the system, which suffered significant wear and tear from being moved multiple times as well as water damage and mold from basement flooding. We salvaged the system and in October 2017 held a panel discussion about plans at our 4th annual conference. It had been sitting in a basement in Detroit for approximately twenty years. Fast forwarding to last year, techno producer and DJ legends Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson gifted the Club Heaven Sound System to us for reactivation. This includes stories of Detroit’s queer dance ecosystem from the late 1960s to the present day in which Club Heaven is a key moment. This means we spend our time telling stories that have rarely been heard outside of our own neighborhoods and local communities and have yet to be included in standard depictions of Detroit’s musical history. Since our founding in 2012, we have preserved and celebrated Detroit music history from below. OUR JOURNEY WITH THE CLUB HEAVEN SOUND SYSTEM
Salvaging Sound, featuring pieces from the Club Heaven Sound System, is up now through April 7th at the Detroit Historical Society. “Retro Amplifier Rack CAD Drawings” via Audio Rescue Team. #ElectronicArchaeology process has begun (and it’s no joke).
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To get involved, sponsor ongoing restoration, or propose a Phase 1 or Phase 2 curation, please contact our director via email at or call direct at 31 2020 UPDATE Please use the hashtags #thesearchforheaven Now with our community partners we are helping to give life back to the Club Heaven Sound System. In the tradition of Chicago’s Warehouse and New York’s Paradise Garage, Club Heaven gave life. In fact, Metro-Detroit lost 75% of its gay bars since Heaven’s doors opened, but Club Heaven’s Sound System and cultural movement remain relevant and active.Īfter a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2018, we are currently conducting electronic archaeology and restoring an assembly of amplifiers, cables, drivers, horns, and speaker cabinets that helped produce the emergence of house and techno music, as well as global recognition of vogue dancing and ballroom culture. Like too many queer spaces, the building that sheltered this after-hours oasis at 7 Mile and Woodward has disappeared. Damon “Magic” Percy, The House of Charlesįor just over a decade beginning in 1984, a generation of DJs, performers, dancers, engineers, club promoters, and especially Black LGBT youth came together to create a kingdom for expression and imagination at Club Heaven in Detroit. Tim Lawrence, author, Love Saves the Day The potential understandings, engagements and adventures that can come out of the restoration of its sound system are huge. It’s thrilling to be able to believe that Detroit’s Club Heaven is entering the frame.
The exploration of these histories is providing us with a sense of what the future might hold. It turns out we’re living in an era that is paying ever closer attention to the hidden histories of sound and dance scenes. We preserve and celebrate its legacy with our community partners. Club Heaven, a legendary and primarily Black LGBT afterhours club in Detroit, gave life.
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I told him I did, and we chatted about the history of the gay scene in Detroit, and how the Woodward had gone from being an old-timers bar full of white guys into a relatively busy bar with a mostly black clientele in the last few years.
It's the building between the hardware store and the empty art supply store.Ī helpful fellow named Steve approached me on the street as I took this picture to ask if I knew what I was taking a picture of. Detroit has a long history of being home to the gay bars of SE Michigan, but since the gays moved north there hasn't been an evolution in the bars of Detroit.