French President Emmanuel Macron has said he wants French house music to be added to UNESCO’s intangible heritage list.
This is the UN body’s list of ‘cultural practices and expressions of heritage’ which compiles assets that add to the wonderful diversity of human culture. Other musical forms to be included on the UNESCO list include Jamaican reggae and Irish harp music. A more recent addition was German techno, which it seems has prompted Macron’s intervention.
“We’re going to do that too,” the President said in an interview with the radio station Fréquence Gaie. “I love Germany - you know how pro-European I am. But we don’t have to take lessons from anyone. We are the inventors of electro. We have that French Touch.”
French house, or as it’s often styled 'French touch' is a form of dance music which first emerged in the mid-1990s and probably peaked a decade later. It made liberal use of filter and phasing effects and sampled heavily from the disco era. Daft Punk were the movement’s big stars, but other significant artists included Bob Sinclar, Cassius, Modjo, Etienne De Crecy and Justice. Some bands and artists gained cred by association with the scene, like Air who gave the sound a spacy retro feel and Phoenix who fused it with indie rock.
For a while Gallic dance music was so hip that one young British producer even pretended to be French as a career move. Stuart Price started out under the name Jacques Lu Cont and recorded one album as Les Rythmes Digitales – he even conducted early interviews via an interpreter. His early work led to him being hired by Madonna as producer for her Confessions On A Dancefloor album, which was heavily influenced by French touch.
Macron is apparently more a lover of classical music, but the heritage list is clearly something he places importance on – he’s previously managed to get UNESCO to add the baguette and Alpine mountain climbing to the list. Whether the UN body will agree with his notion that French producers were “the inventors” of electro is another matter – there are several American producers of the early 1980s (Arthur Baker, Afrika Bambaata) who might care to dispute that…
