Detroit Is Different

“I started taking piano lessons when I was four… and by twelve I had swapped classical sheet music for jazz improv—I was playing from my head, not the page,”—Ian Fink dives deep into the layered roots of Legacy Black Detroit, bridging generational migration, jazz lineage, and the raw ingenuity of Detroit’s music scene. In this rich, in-depth episode of Detroit is Different, host Khary Frazier sits down with Ian Fink—a pianist, producer, and conduit of Detroit’s legacy Black culture—to unpack how jazz camp with Rodney Whitaker and Marcus Belgrave set the tone for his artistry, how early classical training at age four paved the way for profound improvisation, and how his classical-jazz foundations seamlessly birthed a sonic switch into house and techno influenced by Detroit icons like Theo Parrish and Scott Grooves. They dig into family history—from Dexter/Linwood’s Jewish-Black narratives to movement between Detroit and West Bloomfield—bringing light to how personal origin stories shape cultural creation. Ian