Rave New World Radio Ep 2: Soul Skate (That's Waddap Doe)

Rave New World on Montez Press Radio

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Rave New World Radio Ep 2: Soul Skate (That's Waddap Doe)

Detroit's roller skating rinks, like its dancefloors, are critical spaces for liberation

Michelle Lhooq

Jul 18, 2024

Transcript

If you ever find yourself in Detroit during the five-day techno marathon known as Movement, I have some advice: drag yourself away from the roaring speakers and orgiastic tumble of bodies, and take that 30-minute (or longer) Uber ride to Soul Skate—a roller disco spectacle that cannot be found anywhere else. Trust me, it’s an initiation into a scene so sweet and so pure that you won’t regret missing whatever transcendent DJ set your friends are raving about. There will always be another party, but there is only one Soul Skate.

Started by Detroit’s smoothest operator Moodymann, Soul Skate brings together two great Black American subcultures—roller skating and electronic dance music—for the love of dancing on four wheels. What do you do with love like that? The kind of love passed down from generations like an inheritance from elders who want you to remember what matters. The kind of love that sends you spinning into the arms of a stranger to the plucky bassline of “He’s the Greatest Dancer,” confident that she will catch you mid-twirl with a wordless grin.

You glow with it. It shows all over you when you return back to the rave and everyone asks, “Where you been?” In the weeks and months to follow, the mundanity of daily life erodes memory, sanding down sharp details into a blunt recollection of bodies whizzing on rainbow-hued wood. But the essence of that love endures, carries you all the way back to the source.

What I’m saying is that it’s really something. For me, it was like nothing else in my life up till now. So for the second episode of Rave New World’s ongoing radio show with Montez Press Radio, I went behind the scenes and down the chute of history—researching how the leisure sport is connected to Black social movements, chatting backstage with OG roller disco DJ Big Bob, poring over photos of Cher’s celeb-studded parties at the disco and boogie-powered Empire Roller Rink, and even snagging a quote from the elusive Moodymann himself, to find out what’s really whaddap doe.