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Electronic music has been added to the French Intangible Cultural Heritage list.<\/p>\n
The country\u2019s contributions to the genre, which is often referred to as French touch, includes landmark work from the likes of Daft Punk<\/a>,\u00a0Justice<\/a>,\u00a0Air<\/a>,\u00a0Cassius<\/a>,\u00a0Phoenix<\/a>, \u00c9tienne de Cr\u00e9cy,\u00a0M83<\/a>\u00a0and Alan Braxe.<\/p>\n Now, the genre has made it onto the French Intangible Cultural Heritage list, which represents the first step towards UNESCO heritage status.<\/p>\n The list of intangible cultural heritage allows signatory states of the UNESCO Convention to register \u201cpractices, representations, expressions, knowledge and skills that communities recognise as part of their cultural heritage\u201d \u2013 everything from music and craftsmanship to culinary skills, traditional games and sports.<\/p>\n The addition of electronic music to the Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage, acknowledges that the artform is shaping France\u2019s artistic identity.<\/p>\n \u201cElectronic music has a rightful place in our national intangible heritage,\u201d French Culture Minister Rachida Dati said, following the ministry\u2019s labelling of clubs as \u201cplaces of artistic expression and celebration\u201d, per EuroNews<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n Special mention was given to Jean-Michel Jarre who released the seminal album \u2018Oxyg\u00e8ne\u2019 in 1976, using early synthesisers and no vocals.<\/p>\n The record has been credited for inspiring the French Touch sound that came after it, and in 2021, Jarre was presented with the French Legion of Honour, the country\u2019s highest order of merit. He has also served as a UNESCO Ambassador for the country since 1993.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m glad to see that electronic music is finally taking its place within world heritage, especially after more than three decades of commitment as a UNESCO Ambassador and spokesperson for intangible culture,\u201d Jarre said in a post on Instagram, marking this \u201chistoric milestone for electronic music.\u201d<\/p>\n The news comes after French President Emmanuel Macron called for French electronic music to be granted UNESCO cultural heritage status<\/a> back in June.<\/p>\n UNESCO, the United Nations agency that promotes peace and security through culture, arts and sciences, publishes a list of intangible cultural heritage that aims to protect \u201cpractices, representations, expressions, knowledge and skills that communities recognise as part of their cultural heritage\u201d, and in the past this has been bestowed upon music genres such as Jamaican reggae, Mexican mariachi and Cuban rumba.<\/p>\n Berlin techno was another music tradition that was added to the UNESCO list in 2023, and in a recent interview with radio station\u00a0Fr\u00e9quence\u00a0Gaie<\/i>, the French President suggested that French touch should also be added to the list.<\/p>\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to do that too,\u201d Macron said (via\u00a0Euronews<\/i><\/a>). \u201cI love Germany \u2013 you know how pro-European I am. But we don\u2019t have to take lessons from anyone. We are inventors of electro. We have that French touch.\u201d<\/p>\n Some traditional French musical styles are already on the UNESCO protection list, including Gwoka, the Guadeloupean song and dance practice, and the musical art of horn players in the country and their vibrato breath control technique.<\/p>\n Daft Punk are the seminal French touch artists, with Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo having formed the act in Paris in 1993. Their blend of house, funk, techno, synth-pop and disco made them major global stars, with albums such as \u2018Homework\u2019 (1997) and \u2018Discovery\u2019 (2001) being considered as all-time classics of dance music.<\/p>\n Their final album was 2013\u2019s \u2018Random Access Memories<\/a>\u2019, which included the giant hit single \u2018Get Lucky\u2019.\u00a0They announced their official split in February 2021<\/a>\u00a0with a video titled \u2018Epilogue\u2019, in which one of the robots self-destructed while the other walked away into the desert.<\/p>\n The post France recognises electronic music as Intangible Cultural Heritage<\/a> appeared first on NME<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Electronic music has been added to the French Intangible Cultural Heritage list. The country\u2019s contributions to the genre, which is often referred to as French touch, includes landmark work from the likes of Daft Punk,\u00a0Justice,\u00a0Air,\u00a0Cassius,\u00a0Phoenix, \u00c9tienne de Cr\u00e9cy,\u00a0M83\u00a0and Alan Braxe. Now, the genre has made it onto the French Intangible Cultural Heritage list, which represents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-art"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 15:38:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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