from “le détroit” · the strait
On Sunday, Waajeed's Underground Music Academy ran the Detroit Stage at Movement for the first time, putting its students in front of the festival crowd.
On Sunday, May 25, Underground Music Academy ran the Detroit Stage at Movement, the first time the school has had its own showcase at the festival. The set times ran from early afternoon into the night, with the lineup drawn from the people the academy has been teaching.
The Sunday bill, listed on Movement's published set times, ran Ember LaFiamma, Donovan Glover, Blackmoonchild, Disc Jockey George, JMT, fullbodydurag, DJ Sphinx, DJ I.V., and Shawescape Renegade. For most of them, it was a first turn on a Movement stage.
Underground Music Academy is the Detroit school built by Waajeed, the producer and DJ who came up through the city's hip-hop and house worlds. He announced the project in November 2020 and described it as a way to build the next generation of independent electronic music, with free online tutorials following in 2021 and a physical home later in the city's North End, near Motown and the same stretch that has long anchored Black-owned music institutions. The academy says it teaches production and DJing through hands-on, personalized instruction, and it has cited Underground Resistance as a model for keeping that knowledge in Detroit hands.
Putting the school's artists on a festival stage is the clearest version of that pitch. The point of the academy is not just the lessons but the chance to play, and a Detroit Stage slot at Movement is about as visible as a local debut gets.
The showcase also folds into the academy's wider teaching work. ELEMENTS, the school's free workshop series, returned later in 2025 with sessions running November 22 to December 13, a collaboration with Resident Advisor and Paxahau and support from the Detroit Techno Foundation, per Resident Advisor's announcement. That run was open to intermediate and advanced DJs and producers in metro Detroit, with sessions on building mixes, handling the business side of a music career, and preparing for gigs. The earlier ELEMENTS cohort that launched in 2024 produced several of the names that turned up on the Detroit Stage, including DJ I.V., DJ Sphinx, Disc Jockey George, and JMT.
"If pressure makes diamonds, Detroit is a diamond mine," Waajeed told Resident Advisor of the program. "We use our conditions to lift our students to their best selves."
Underground Music Academy is online at undergroundmusicacademy.com.
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