At the risk of generalizing wildly, I think the song below is a near perfect metaphor for Detroit’s present situation. At the very least, if you think Martha Reeves’s voice was best when she sang Dancing in The Street, that will change.

A chance encounter with an extremely charismatic employee of the Heidelberg Project led me to discovering this song. I’d been to the art exhibit many times, but I had no idea that there was a gift shop, let alone that it was in one of the houses. The woman in the gift shop told me that Reeves had visited the Heidelberg a few days before me, and the woman working in the gift shop pulled out her phone and started playing something distinctly not Motown.

“Martha wrote this song about Tyree and the impact he had on Detroit through the Heidelberg,” she said over the driving beat of the song:

“One child with a dream/For the city, he changed the scene/Took debris of yours and mine, turned it into a gold mine”

This is why I’m excited to call Detroit home. This song, a funk-electronic tour de force voiced by one of the most powerful voices in Motown’s history, is a representation of the best things that are happening in Detroit. People are discovering Detroit, remixing it and evolving into something absolutely new. Those who are most successful at this cultural evolution are drawing on the experiences and talents of the people who live here and, like Martha Reeves, refused to leave Detroit even when they saw everything crumble around them.