Chicago’s ARC Music Festival tells the story of house music

2024 marks the 40th anniversary of house music, a genre of electronic music with roots in Chicago. However, the Midwest is home to more than just house — a close relative to house — techno has origins in Detroit, just a few years before house exploded in Chicago.

Just as classical music played a crucial role in shaping Western music, early Chicago house and Detroit techno shaped electronic music into what we recognize today. 

And the origins of house can be traced all the way back to classical music. From house and techno tracks sampling famous composers like Bach or Beethoven, to techno’s minimalist influences from composers such as Philip Glass and Louis Andriessen. 

DJ Holographic, a Detroit native, reinforced the influence of classical music in her mixes. “I’ve kind of always said … being out there and DJing, you’re almost creating a whole thing with different movements and putting it all together and making it one cohesive set,” she said. 

House and techno pull from many genres. “We like disco stuff. We like, you know, some funk stuff. When house was kicking off, hip-hop was already in full swing in New York,” said DJ Hyperactive, a Chicago-based DJ who performs with fellow Chicago icon Hiroko Yamamura. “Chicago house music was like blazing with two big radio stations here.”

WBMX and WCGI both started as easy listening and classic music stations, both eventually pivoted to a house and techno format before settling into their current formats, classic hip-hop and contemporary hip-hop respectively. 

DJ Holographic recalled when house and techno eventually left the airwaves of WBMX and WCGI.

“What I saw happening was a series of underground, warehouse parties, raves, or rather like what we call raves, really starting getting busted a lot, you know …the whole rave thing, it kind of caught fire in the early ’90s. It really spread throughout the Midwest. You would have Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis, some of the cities in Iowa, you know, St. Louis started popping off.”

To help tell the story of house and techno in Chicago, Nick Karounos, John Curley and Stuart Hackley founded the ARC Music festival in 2021, which has been held on Labor Day weekend each year since. 

“I like to look at the festival itself as trying to tell the story, because the story goes back many years. And even though house music now is such a global phenomenon, I don’t think a lot of people understand that or know that. And I think the best way to tell that story is by taking all of these global sounds that went everywhere and just evolved into all these different genres and subgenres and whatnot. And bringing it back here and showcasing it here in its, you know, birthplace. And doing so, make sure you’re showcasing artists from here, originators, new jacks, everything,” said Hackley.

The tie between Detroit techno and Chicago house is so strong, ARC introduced a stage last year called Area 909, with the sole purpose of showcasing the musical bond between Chicago and Detroit, with local acts, special back-to-back sets, and sounds of the next generation all weekend. Many of the DJs from Chicago played this year at the Movement Music Festival in Detroit.

Curley explains how even the name of the stage is an homage to the Detroit and Chicago connection. “It became clear what we’ve got a lot of these Detroit artists, we’ve got Chicago artists. I think it was our creative director who brought up the idea of 909 because there’s a story about a (Roland) 909 unit that would travel between Chicago and Detroit.” 

There are festivals that are part of the history of a genre, there are festivals that are telling the story of a genre, and then there are festivals that do both like Chicago’s ARC festival. 

The goal of ARC is to bring house music home, and it does just that by combining newcomers and veterans of house music in the city where it all started.