President Emmanuel Macron said he wanted to nominate French electronic music – identified with the so -called French touch – as an immaterial cultural heritage of humanity according to Unesco. In an interview with Fréquance Gaie, the Head of the Elysée referred to the recognition recently granted to the Berlin techno, added to the UNESCO list in 2023: “We will also do it – he said, as reported by Euronews – I love Germany, you know how pro -European I am. But we must not take lessons from anyone. We are the inventors of the electronics. We have the French Touch.”
UNESC protects artistic and cultural traditions that communities recognize as part of their heritage: even the Jamaican reggae, the Mexican march and the Cuban Rosa have obtained this recognition in the past. In the French context, already present on the list are, for example, the Gwoka (song and dance typical of Guadeloupe) and the musical art of the horns, known for the control technique of breathing and vibrated.
The contribution of the so -called French touch to electronic music of the last decades has been decisive. The French movement revolutionized the genre, at the turn of the 90s and 2000s, with a large group of artists: from the retrofuturist atmospheres of the Air to the robotic parties of the Daft Punk, from pioneers of the console Like Laurent Garnier, Dimitri from Paris, Cassius, Motorbass, Sebastién Tellier and Kavinsky to bands that mixed the house roots with sophisticated electro, pop and lounge plots, from St Germain to M83, from La Femme to Le Superhomard. All protagonists of a scene that has had a global impact, as cultural as it is stylistic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgbhqbmpwh8
Among all French artists, Daft Punk remain the absolute emblem of the French touch. The duo, formed in Paris in 1993 by Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, has been able to merge house, funk, techno, synth-pop e disc In an unmistakable style, giving life to legendary albums such as “Homework” (1997) and “Discovery” (2001). The latest work in the studio was the equally memorable “Random Access Memories” (2013), dragged by the planetary success of “Get Lucky”. Their separation was made official in 2021 with a video entitled “Epilogue”, in which one of the two “robots” self -destroyed while the other moved away in the desert.
Macron's initiative thus fits into a political will to officially recognize the cultural value of French electronic music, not only for its stylistic influence but also as an identity part of the country.
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
