Detroit remembers techno icon Collins

• "John was a constant presence in shaping Detroit music and nightlife culture, dating all the way back to Cheeks Nightclub in the early 1980s," the group's post reads.

The big picture: Collins was widely regarded as the ambassador of Detroit techno. His resume was long and impactful, including advocacy around techno's origins with Black people in Detroit.

• For techno's Black DJs and producers, "it was a music of hope, of living in a better time, because music transcended us into a time where people are coexisting together," he told Axios last year.
• Collins guided visitors at the Exhibit 3000 techno museum and served as community curator for a recent MSU exhibition on Detroit as the birthplace of techno.

What they're saying: "A lot of his legacy is in his ability to tell the story and be a part of the story … the origins of techno and its evolution and its impact," says MSU English professor and museum curator Julian Chambliss, who worked on the recent exhibition with Collins.

• "That's inherently a Detroit-specific story, but techno is a global conversation, and just explaining that to people can be really complicated."

"We have lost a true, relentless soldier of the underground," techno collective Underground Resistance, with which Collins was affiliated, wrote on Instagram.

No cause of death had been disclosed as of Monday, per DJ Mag.

Go deeper: More on Collins' career from DJ Mag … Axios' coverage of techno's Detroit roots.