The Sound of Young America now has 60 candles on its birthday cake. And in Detroit, the party is just getting started.

Motown is celebrating its diamond anniversary in 2019, marking 60 years since Berry Gordy Jr. founded the company that became a musical, cultural and commercial force inextricably linked to the city, right down to the name.

The anniversary will bring a series of high-profile hometown events led by the Motown Museum, including a new exhibit, a spring block party and a celebrity-studded Motown 60 Weekend in the fall.

The birthday is officially Saturday: On Jan. 12, 1959, Gordy secured $800 from a family co-op fund to start his independent record company.

But the Motown anniversary campaign will be a yearlong affair, including global initiatives by Motown Records and Capitol Music Group, the latest corporate parent since Gordy sold the label in 1988. It will be a year that honors Detroit stars now gone and the luminaries still with us — working alumni such as Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Mary Wilson and Martha Reeves, along with groups such as the Temptations and Four Tops, helmed by respective founding members Otis Williams and Duke Fakir.