Feature : A festival of music!

In the wake of techno, house and world music, a new generation of French artists is at last beginning to find success abroad.

To an outsider, it must seem as if French popular music disappeared into a black hole during the years between Piaf and Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the beginning of the nineties. Those French pop singers who blandly adapted British and U.S. standards were the object of ridicule, as were French variety shows. While France enjoyed a good reputation in more elitist fields (jazz, contemporary music...), it rarely seemed capable of producing pop music that appealed abroad, with the exception of isolated cases such as Charles Aznavour, Mireille Mathieu, Serge Gainsbourg... The disco era at the end of the seventies was its only moment of glory (Cerrone, Patrick Hernandez, not to mention a few stars of the sixties who underwent an image makeover: Claude François, Sheila...).

In the nineties, the French music landscape began to diversify, supported by developments at both the legislative level (in particular the 1994 law on the quotas of French songs played on the radio)* and the technical level (the spread of new promotion media from Internet to satellite), as well as a change of strategy by the major players in the record industry, who more and more preferred to delegate head-hunting activities to independent labels (and then harvest the fruits of their efforts as soon as success set in).

Paris has today become a stronghold of techno and house music. Well before the techno wave began, Jean-Michel Jarre had already established himself as an internationally recognised forerunner. But it was not until the mid-nineties that an entire scene began to emerge. Paradoxically, it was in Britain that the "French Touch", the term used to refer to the wave of DJs from the other side of the Channel, was finally consecrated.

Following in the footsteps of Laurent Garnier, Daft

Punk burst onto the influential UK music scene at the beginning of 1997, with one album, Homework (Virgin), which sold 1.5 million copies worldwide. A whole rack of artists (Air, Cassius, Stardust, Bob Sinclar, Dimitri from Paris, Mr Oizo, Kojak...) subsequently rushed into the breach, brilliantly imposing the "French Touch" as a lasting movement, from London to Berlin, as well as Rome, New York, Sydney, Amsterdam, Ibiza, Toronto...

After the "French Touch" and the US success of the Gipsy Kings, the "world" scene - traditional or modern - has also gained respect and acknowledgement. As a host country, France has been able to discover and replicate talents from cultures far removed from the UK or US spheres of influence (Cesaria Evora, Lhasa, Wes, Alabina...). Besides certain countries in the West (Germany, United States, Canada...), world music has provided access to regions less in the media, such as Africa or Latin America. French artists are not insensitive to this multi-cultural mix: the Hispanic-influenced album Clandestino by Manu Chao (ex Mano Negra) went platinum in Spain; and Deep Forest and Era have sold millions of albums.

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Variety, rap and opera

Other musical styles are rarely of any great interest outside the French-speaking countries - give or take a few exceptions. In the world of chanson as it currently stands, and leaving aside the exception of Quebec singer Céline Dion (whose album D’eux - written almost entirely by Frenchman Jean-Jacques Goldman - became the highest selling French album in the world, with 6 million copies), only Florent Pagny, Mylène Farmer, Francis Cabrel and Patricia Kaas can claim to have had any impact in Europe, as has Anggun, from Indonesia, who sings in French and in English and whose career has rocketed over the past year.

Rap, whose entire raison d’être are its lyrics, suffers in the same way from the language barrier. However, its popularity is growing within the French-speaking countries, especially in Africa. Last year IAM picked up gold and platinum discs in Belgium, Switzerland and Canada, as had MC Solaar a few years previously. In 1998, Manau, which performs Celtic rap variety, even went beyond the borders of the French-speaking regions with the album Tribu de Dana, which became popular in Holland and Poland.

French rock is largely ignored even if Mano Negra, after a multitude of concerts, has acquired some fame in Latin America and even if young groups such as Autour de Lucie have benefited from some good word-of-mouth propaganda among the US urban set (selling almost 80,000 albums). French jazz unites a more limited - albeit passionate - audience. Since Jean-Luc Ponty, only Michel Petrucciani, who died in January 1999, has made any impact among jazz listeners.

The same goes for classical music, where France has few mass audience artists. Richard Clayderman retains a faithful following in Asia and in eastern Europe. But the real revelation of 1998 has to be Emma Shapplin. Carmine meo, the first album by this young diva, picked up gold and platinum discs in thirteen countries (including Argentina, Greece, the Lebanon and New Zealand).

Behind this creative impetus, new structures have been set up and organised. The techno sector has given rise to a network of independent labels, most of which achieve three quarters of their sales outside France. Export departments have developed - and not just among the majors. The music industry professionals and the corporate players have also sized up the potential, both cultural and economic, of this international

* Radio stations are obliged by law to broadcast a minimum of 40% of French-language songs, of which 50% must be new talents or new productions.