Emmanuel Macron has expressed his desire for French electronic music to achieve UNESCO World Heritage status. Known for its distinctive sound, often called “French touch,” this genre has produced groundbreaking artists such as Daft Punk, Justice, Air, Cassius, Phoenix, Étienne de Crécy, M83, and Alan Braxe.
UNESCO, the United Nations agency focused on promoting culture, arts, and sciences, maintains a list of intangible cultural heritage to protect the “practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, and skills recognized by communities as vital to their cultural identity.” Previous entries have included genres like Jamaican reggae, Mexican mariachi, and Cuban rumba.
In 2023, Berlin techno was added to this prestigious list, prompting Macron to suggest that French touch should follow suit in a recent interview with the radio station Gay Frequency. “We’re going to do that too,” he stated (via Euronews). He emphasized, “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.”
Several traditional French musical styles, like Gwoka—a Guadeloupean song and dance—and specific horn-playing techniques, are already recognized by UNESCO.
Daft Punk stands out as iconic figures in the French touch movement. Founded in Paris in 1993 by Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, they fused house, funk, techno, synth-pop, and disco, becoming global superstars with classics like Homework (1997) and Discovery (2001). Their last album, Random Access Memories (2013), featured the massive hit “Get Lucky.” The duo announced their split in February 2021 with a video titled “Epilogue,” showing one of the robots self-destructing while the other walked away into the desert.
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