There will always be someone smarter, more experienced and better equipped than you. But without soul, empty-hearted bravura will see the most disciplined artists languish from artistic oblivion. This is a truth that underlies the profound endurance of Black American music. Negro spirituals, field work songs and spirited percussive music first bloomed from the blood-streaked plantations of the Slavery-era South, leaving an insurmountable cultural impact on music history. Centuries later, disco—a Black art form fusing funk and classical music—reigned over the airwaves. One of Detroit's most significant Black musical exports was beginning to sweep across the Motor City, then fettered by a dwindling automotive industry, white flight and the residual effects of 1967 race riots. As the once bustling city plunged into bankruptcy and urban blight, techno emerged in the '80s from the young, Black American working class, marking the city's shot at a brighter future. But several factors, a pivotal one being that Europe was simply more receptive to the fledgling genre than the U.S., have resulted in an insidious historical amnesia of techno's Black roots.

Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson, cofounder of the women-centered booking agency Discwoman and founder of dweller, the first festival of its kind to solely highlight Black talent, has been on a tireless mission to fill these educational gaps. Over the last decade, much of Hutchinson's work with Discwoman and dweller—as well as the latter platform's namesake blog, dedicated to niche, in-depth writing about Black sonic culture—involved recentering Blackness within electronic music discourse. In 2019, she started the festival as a small scale five-night series of events at the now-shuttered Bossa Nova Civic Club which featured local underground promoters, labels and collectives such as Confused House, Like That Records and Half Moon Radio. With the help of new co-curators Ryan Clarke and Enyo Amexo, the festival's third edition held last week highlighted intergenerational connection, enlisting legends such as Underground Resistance, Detroit house DJ Stacey "Hotwaxx" Hale and London drum & bass producer dBridge to play alongside younger innovators like New York techno DJ Tygapaw, Berlin club music royalty LSDXOXO and Syd Falls, a local newcomer with an affinity towards punishing 160 BPM tracks.

Taking place at four different locations across New York, (one of them including a yet-to-be-announced new venue), dweller 2022 was a revelatory intermingling of interviews, live performances and epiphanous DJ sets that blazed through diasporic genres like jungle, footwork and Afrobeats. Time melted into sumptuous moments of easy-flowing laughter, reckless head-banging and the kind of teary-eyed embraces that could only be birthed in the midst of a euphoric daze.

Over a Zoom call after the festival, I caught up with Hutchinson, whose stylish yellow-tinted sunglasses worn throughout the festival's final stretch were swapped for a more casual accessory, a snug green hoodie, worn from the comfort of her bedroom. "I'm a huge believer of how powerful compassion is, and it felt like that was really reflected in the space," she beamed.

Hutchinson said her mental health suffered in the lead-up to the festival as she struggled to grapple with the high expectations that come with successfully running an event of this scale. But during our conversation, she managed more than a few smiles through her post-festival fatigue. "It's very weird to be in this quite challenging mental health spiral, and being like, 'Why am I even doing this,' to the next week being like, 'This is the best thing ever,'" she said, throwing her hands up as a wide grin spread across her face. "This feels psychotic to me."

Black music enthusiasts from Miami, Columbus, New Orleans and Los Angeles flew in for this year's edition, earning the festival the endearing byname "The Black techno family reunion" among attendees. dweller is no longer a humble party series. Its last instalment signaled its nationwide reputation as an essential meeting point for anyone invested in Black electronic music's past, present and future. dweller's astronomic growth heralds a shifting tide in US electronic music history, a moment wherein younger musicians, who weren't personally present to witness techno and house emanate from the Black communities of the Midwest, are nevertheless secure in their knowledge of the genres' roots. "I think people understand that this history has somehow been obfuscated, and I felt like there was a determination to want to bring it back." Hutchinson explained. "I think that comes with parties like this—and other Black parties too—that is also part of wanting to not let anyone forget where the shit comes from, you know?"

In only the past 12 months, the Black community has lost electronic music artists that some of us naïvely believed would live forever. The deaths of Paul Johnson, K-Hand, Lee "Scratch" Perry and Virgil Abloh are only a few which sank scenes from all over the world into collective grief. New York DJ Dee Diggs, who first experimented with mixing house records seven years ago, expressed gratitude for the opportunity to pay respects to some of her living heroes in the wake of all this loss. "The time for reverence of the people who really started this culture and have given so much to it is when they're still alive and we can shake their hands," she said. "It's not after they're gone. It's not when they're just a name on a track."

This view has already spilled out of New York and into the many Black events taking over clubs and warehouses across the States. Detroit has Ash Lauryn's Underground & Black platform, Los Angeles has BAE BAE's Hood Rave party. D.C. has the Black Rave Culture collective, founded by DJ Nativesun, Amal and James Bangura. Speaking on the significance of dweller over Zoom, longtime UR label manager Cornelius Harris told me, "The fact of something like this existing is really a testament to a lot of people taking ownership of something." He continued, "I appreciate so much that there are folks here who weren't going to be satisfied just learning about the origins of the music, but folks were like, 'No, we're going to play this music. We're going to make this music. We're going to celebrate this music. We're going to do it, and our way.'"

The bulk of the festival's intellectual takeaways were sermonized by another UR member, Mike Banks, at the festival's closing panel which featured his own collective alongside local DJs JADALAREIGN, Dee Diggs and Alima Lee. "We're of the belief that these beats are all that's left of what we used to be. Nothing we do is new. All of y'all know the beats," Banks said, speaking of techno's ancestral power. "These are ancient beats with new shit."

In its most traditional state, techno, which has been called many names over time, including electro, hustle music and jit music, is the embodiment of Black soul. Barred from any semblance of school, enslaved Black people didn't learn soul. It erupted, rather, unrepentantly from their throats, feet and calloused hands as a means to protest, revel and console. If ancestral trauma can be passed down many generations, surely the same can be said for this inexplicable transference of funk? The recognition of Black techno as an inherently spiritual practice seemed to be understood and felt widely among festivalgoers. Weeks ago, musician Dyani Douze traveled to New York from their Miami home for the first time since the pandemic, and decided to extend their stay when they realized the festival was approaching. The evening after dweller, we spoke extensively about the feeling of home that was experienced during the event as they waited to board their flight to the South. "When I think about techno and house, I literally hear African drumming patterns," they explained. "It's soul music. Just like soul food is soul food. You know, it has spirit within it. It's not just food, it's not just music. It has this whole other element to it that takes you somewhere."

During dweller's closing marathon at Nowadays, the wooden dance floor, illuminated from the pearly dawn sunlight that flooded in from the club's high loft windows, was transformed into a hallowed surface. The word "church" fell off everyone's tongues for hours after rapturous sets from Huey Mnemonic, Underground Resistance and Syd Falls vibrated against their wiggling bodies. Historically, the Black church recast the master's religion into their own, inverting this traditional tool of oppression to affirm and nourish Black communities overwhelmed by grief and rampant inequality. On Sunday morning at Nowadays, a white-owned venue, I do believe something similar took place as "Melodies From Heaven" filled the room and beautiful Black people, making the space theirs, latched onto each other and whined hip to hip, crying and cavorting as if they were experiencing music for the very first time.

New York DJ Kilopatrah Jones, who took the opening shift the previous night, explained the energy at Syd Fall's morning set nicely: "They played a Kirk Franklin acapella with techno, playing at like 160 beats per minute," she said, glowing as she recalled the event. "I remember looking up and seeing the sun come out and I was just like, 'Yo… This is my Paradise Garage right here. This feeling I have, I want to hold onto this forever.'"