France Recognizes Electronic Music as ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’

It’s official: Air, Cassius, Daft Punk, Justice and the great Jean-Michel Jarre are pillars of French culture.

Electronic music is added to the national Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage, acknowledgement that the artform is shaping France’s artistic identity.

“Electronic music has a rightful place in our national intangible heritage,” says French Culture Minister Rachida Dati, following the ministry’s labelling of clubs as “places of artistic expression and celebration”.

Special mention is given to Jean-Michel Jarre, who, in his late 20s created the masterpiece Oxygène, an album of sweeping electronic tunes, all of them made on early synthesizers, without a vocal in the mix.

Oxygène, released in 1976, and the albums that came after it, including Equinoxe and Zoolook, inspired the French Touch sound which spun around the world and continues to shine.

Jarre has put the work in for decades. The former president of CISAC, the global confederation of authors societies, has served as a UNESCO Ambassador since 1993, a role through which he plays point on advocating for electronic music.

In 2021, president Emmanuel Macron presented the composer and artist with the French Legion of Honour, the country’s highest order of merit. On that occasion, Jarre was feted with the insignia of Commander to the Legion of Honour, recognized as the country’s highest honor, both military and civil.

“I’m 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,” says Jarre in a social post, marking this “historic milestone for electronic music.”

Over five decades, Jarre, now 77, has presented electronic music at the grandest of stages by performing at UNESCO World Heritage sites including the Pyramids of Giza, the Forbidden City, the Eiffel Tower, Versailles, Masada, Pompeii and, most recently, Samarkand. Just last month, he played at Registan Square in Samarkand during UNESCO’s 43rd General Conference.

France might’ve birthed the electronic music movement almost 100 years ago. It was the French inventor Maurice Martenot who in 1928 unveiled the Ondes Martenot, one of the first electronic instruments and one that is still used today by orchestras.