Weona Ryder, founder & host of Motormouth:
feeling worlds of gratitude writing this reflection. it feels surreal that we’ve been on the airwaves for a year, but we are just getting started. our work here is not done, as our love for detroit will never fade away. we truly cherish every single song, artist, album, space, collective, labels, etc, that we highlight on motormouth. and i would like to take some time to talk about this…
2-3 years ago, me and dj jomo would ride our bikes around the city at night, blasting everything from drexciya to laughing hyenas. this was also around the time i got off all social media. what was really infuriating to me at that time was not knowing of any shows, releases, interviews, etc, because everything gets posted onto “the gram.” however, i soon began to realize that this is merely a surface level issue and there are bigger problems underneath it all.
dj jomo and i would have extensive conversations about this on our nocturnal bike rides, as we were learning more about techno’s history and the philosophy behind it. we felt like we were getting a commercialized experience rather than experiencing a communal one. where profit, marketing, and branding are prioritized, rather than connection and collectiveness.
we were inspired by Mojo, an anonymous radio host back in the day that truly was about the music and nothing else. with his midnight funk association, he would have the entire city lighting up their car headlights, porch lights, bedroom lights for the landing of the mothership. there was a true sense of collectiveness through the music. however, being born in 1999… to actually experience the midnight funk association was a ghost of a chance. i’m left with only the anecdotes of techno titans illustrating how essential and important it was for the city to have underground, unrestricted, and uncompromising music on the airwaves.
around this time, DJ jomo wrote Acid Detroit and would talk to me about Mark Fisher’s conception of hauntology, “according to Fisher, society is haunted by the remnants of lost futures, leading to a cultural landscape where nostalgia and revivalism are predominant on a superficial, aesthetic level,” which really resonated with me because i had felt like I missed out on the “good” days and they were not coming back. i didnt want to romanticize the past either, because there was a plethora of hardships in the city throughout the 20th century. however, the difference between then and now is that we are lacking, deteriorating, and trading off our collectiveness and togetherness in the name of profit and individualism.
so then the next thing i thought was, are we going to be a part of the problem or are we going to be a part of the solution? you can’t do both. in todays current situation, there are spaces in the area (and honestly all over) that have weaponized phrases like “community”, “safe space”, “family” but are actually being pretty deceptive about the profits they’re raking in. there is nothing familial or communal about making money off of peoples vulnerabilities and/or the exploitation of artists. this is not new, and hasn’t been for a very long time. the exploitation we see today though, it is meant to look pretty at face value and to deceive people into self-willingly giving money or time to it. the same exact places and “collectives” are the ones that have dominated the nightlife circuit, leaving it narrowed for any new, up and coming collectives & DIY spaces.
so, that is when motormouth was born.
we don’t want to play “the game.” we have other ideas of success and none of those ideas include profit. we wanted to bring back old traditional ways of media. in the age of streaming services and social media, digging up dead mediums like radio programming, blogging, hand-made zines, and word of mouth, might seem mindless to some. but to us, we see it as mindful.
instead of having to make constant posts daily to beat the algorithm, wasting away creative energy for the sake of marketing/branding, and upholding the fast-paced consumption model we are forced to use, we have adopted these dying mediums to reject and remove the hands of robber barons that have tainted, exploited, and nearly destroyed our respective & communal scenes. the sonic landscape of detroit, both from the past and present, is truly sacred and must be protected from these soulless entities.
long story short— if you have made it this far in my reflection, i would like to express my gratitude to you for taking the time out of your day to read this. please talk to a stranger today. please pick up a magazine or a vinyl record today. please connect with someone or something other than swiping up on a story or doom scrolling on shorts. you will be surprised when you clear your head from the online algorithm and see all the gilded features we are consciously and subconsciously perpetuating. we do not have to accept this decadent lifestyle. we can’t relive the days before iphones and tik tok, but we can be intentional with the technology we have access to in our daily lives.
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Jomo, editor & co-host of Motormouth:
As we mark one year of Motormouth, I reflect on how far this little experiment has come. What started as joining my great friend Weona Ryder in co-hosting a weekly radio show, “dedicated and devoted to all things Detroit, both past and present,” has slowly evolved into a multi-faceted operation that now includes guest writers, artists, show reviews, think pieces, and interviews. We live on the airwaves, with a new episode of the show airing on 99.1 CJAM every week. But we also live virtually, here, on our blog, and physically in the form of three self-published zines.
In some ways, reaching this milestone isn’t surprising—Motormouth was built with sustainability in mind. We’ve always envisioned this project as a long-term effort, so hitting the one-year mark passed quietly, largely uncelebrated. In some ways, there was little more to say than “back to business as usual.”
But this isn’t a business.
Motormouth is driven by a deep passion for the intersections of Detroit, music, art, storytelling, and—if I may be so bold—political and philosophical ideals. We remain committed to our values, including maintaining anonymity as much as possible in a panoptic world. We will continue to keep Motormouth off social media in an effort to bypass dominant models of information dissemination and gatekeeping. We will continue to celebrate Detroit’s brilliance and tell the stories of those who’ve made their mark here. And, of course, we'll never play the same song twice.
Here's to another year of curiosity and discovery.
