It is more than a year since UNESCO added Berlin’s ‘techno culture’ to its ever-growing list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Not to be left behind, French president Emmanuel Macron spoke up for his countrymen’s music efforts in the electronic dance music sphere when he told Radio FG this summer: ‘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.’
Where Macron has spoken, UNESCO might take the hint. On 17 December, France’s national list expanded to include French electronic music – from the ondes Martenot to French Touch (the disco-sampling dance genre practised by the likes of Cassius, Justice, Air and, perhaps most famously in the anglosphere, Daft Punk). Does it seem churlish of Macron to complain about UNESCO’s omission when France has been so slow? Rakewell couldn’t possibly say.
While it’s hard to imagine the French culture minister Rachida Dati being touched by Stardust, perhaps she was too winded from getting down to ‘Music Sounds Better with You’ in her rue de Valois offices to say more than this: ‘Electronic music has a rightful place in our national intangible heritage.’
More heartfelt, and understandably so, was the reaction of Tommy Vaudecrane, president of the trade body Technopol and organiser of the Paris Techno Parade since 1998: ‘The first tears I shed for electronic music were under tear gas when it was demonised […] The little tear I shed today is for the joy of seeing our music finally inscribed on the Intangible Cultural Heritage list.’
Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk announced in 2021 that they were hanging up their helmets in an enigmatic video called ‘Epilogue’. When it comes to electronic music, your roving correspondent’s heart will always belong to their German cousins – chut, don’t tell Emmanuel Macron – but perhaps this latest accolade will make the duo think about reforming one more time to achieve the around the world heritage status only UNESCO can afford?
