The myth of Drexciya is getting its moment at the Toronto Biennial, as retold by Underground Resistance. That’s free through December 20th if you’re in Ontario, but let’s kick off a watery weekend with the accompanying playlist, too, courtesy UR and Sumberge label manager Cornelius Harris.
Drexciya and Underground Resistance are doubly worth celebrating because it’s not only the music’s history, but its creative present. It’s great seeing this mythology and art get their due alongside all the active releasing, support, and education from the UR crew in Detroit, and the movements this inspired. The exhibition features Frankie C. Fultz and AbuQadim Haqq, and since the art and sound are interrelated, we get sounds, too.
Your required listening list, which honestly sounds as fresh in 2026 as ever:
That’s on Spotify, but you can convert using a service like https://www.tunemymusic.com, which even supports auto-sync to some services. (The link is broken on the Toronto Biennial site; thanks to Cornelius for sending it over)
And the exhibition sounds fantastic. I’m basically writing about this to get my Toronto friends and readers to make the pilgrimage.
In the 1990s, Banks brought a Detroit-based techno duo called Drexciya (Gerald Donald and James Stinson) to UR. As Drexciya, Gerald and James, along with others, created a sonic and visual orthography that imagined an underwater realm born of the Middle Passage and unfolded in Drexciya’s music and within the liner notes of multiple UR album releases.
The myth of Drexciya has come to life through associated visual artists, notably Detroit-based artists Frankie C. Fultz, who designed the original album artwork for The Return of Drexciya (1996), and AbuQadim Haqq, who designed the original album artwork for Neptune’s Lair (1999) and The Book of Drexciya Volume One, on view here.
Underground Resistance presents Drexciya and beyond
Photos: Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.
It’s worth repeating the UR manifesto — especially if you’re planning some studio time or jams or digging over the weekend — because this to me says a hell of a lot more than the vast majority of the Influencers and Instagram Posters Complaining do. It lays it all out. Why repeat what it says when you could spend that time building what it describes?
Underground Resistance is a label for a movement.
A movement that wants change by sonic revolution.
We urge you to join the resistance and help us combat the mediocre audio and visual programming that is being fed to the inhabitants of Earth, this programming is stagnating the minds of the people; building a wall between races and preventing world peace.
It is this wall we are going to smash.
By using the untapped energy potential of sound we are going to destroy this wall much the same as certain frequencies shatter glass.
Techno is a music based in experimentation; it is music for the future of the human race.
Without this music there will be no peace, no love, no vision.
By simply communicating through sound, techno has brought people of all different nationalities together under one roof to enjoy themselves.
Isn’t it obvious that music and dance are the keys to the universe?
So called primitive animals and tribal humans have known this for thousands of years!
We urge all brothers and sisters of the underground to create and transmit their tones and frequencies no matter how so called primitive their equipment may be.
Transmit these tones and wreak havoc on the programmers!
Let’s find out what’s happening under the surface of the water of Lake Ontario, then! A lake by that name and that name alone.
Oh, and speaking of submerging and immersion, you should check out the (delightfully retro, full of treasures) Submerge website, too, while we’re talking Detroit:
(On the topic of Detroit and art, coming back to Mr. Alan Oldham shortly and his new one. The humans of Detroit are busy.)