Martha Reeves tours Travel & Leisure around Motown

Motown singer-turned-Detroit City Councilwoman tours a Travel & Leisure writer around Motown.

Excerpt:

Can you imagine being a girl-group scholar and having the lead singer of one of the most important groups in history elected to the city council of a major American city on a platform with a wide tourism plank, and being a writer for a travel magazine like the one you’re holding? Can you guess where this is going? Armed with a picture of Reeves I took as a teenager at the Garden with a primitive Instamatic, I went to Detroit to consider her shot at turning a brave, if besieged, Midwestern city into a destination. As Detroit struggles with an estimated $150 million budget shortfall, a homicide rate for the crime rolls, and a hemorrhaging auto industry, Reeves largely proposes to do this by leveraging the city’s musical heritage—meaning Motown, Aretha Franklin, and more contemporary figures like Madonna and Eminem.

Read the entire article here.