Music of France
Encyclopedia
France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 has a wide variety of indigenous folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

, as well as styles played by immigrants from Africa, Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

 and Asia. In the field of classical music
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...

, France has produced a number of legendary composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

s, while modern pop music has seen the rise of popular French hip hop
French hip hop
French hip hop is the hip hop music style which was developed in France, and is considered the second worldwide hip hop scene after the U.S....

, techno
Techno
Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...

/funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...

, zouk
Zouk
Zouk is a style of rhythmic music originating from the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe & Martinique. Zouk means "party" or "festival" in the local Antillean Creole of French, although the word originally referred to, and is still used to refer to, a popular dance, based on the Polish dance, the...

, and pop
French rock
French rock is a form of rock music produced in France, primarily in the French language.In the 1970s, France saw the arrival of Alan Stivell's Breton folk-rock as well as a wave of progressive rock bands like Ange, Shylock, Magma, Eskaton, Atoll and Pulsar. French punk rock also appeared,...

 performers.

Music History

French music history
Music history
Music history, sometimes called historical musicology, is the highly diverse subfield of the broader discipline of musicology that studies the composition, performance, reception, and criticism of music over time...

 dates back to organum
Organum
Organum is, in general, a plainchant melody with at least one added voice to enhance the harmony, developed in the Middle Ages. Depending on the mode and form of the chant, a supporting bass line may be sung on the same text, the melody may be followed in parallel motion , or a combination of...

 in the 10th century, followed by the Notre Dame School
Notre Dame school
The group of composers working at or near the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris from about 1160 to 1250, along with the music they produced, is referred to as the Notre Dame school, or the Notre Dame School of Polyphony....

, an organum composition style. Troubadour
Troubadour
A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....

 songs of chivalry
Chivalry
Chivalry is a term related to the medieval institution of knighthood which has an aristocratic military origin of individual training and service to others. Chivalry was also the term used to refer to a group of mounted men-at-arms as well as to martial valour...

 and courtly love
Courtly love
Courtly love was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration. Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility. It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife....

 were composed in the Occitan language between the 10th and 13th centuries, and the Trouvère
Trouvère
Trouvère , sometimes spelled trouveur , is the Northern French form of the word trobador . It refers to poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the troubadours but who composed their works in the northern dialects of France...

 poet-composers flourished in Northern France during this period. By the end of the 12th century, a form of song called the motet
Motet
In classical music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions.-Etymology:The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, and the Italian...

 arose, accompanied by traveling musicians called jongleurs. In the 14th century, France produced two notable styles of music, Ars Nova
Ars nova
Ars nova refers to a musical style which flourished in France and the Burgundian Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages: more particularly, in the period between the preparation of the Roman de Fauvel and the death of the composer Guillaume de Machaut in 1377...

 and Ars Subtilior
Ars subtilior
Ars subtilior is a musical style characterized by rhythmic and notational complexity, centered around Paris, Avignon in southern France, also in northern Spain at the end of the fourteenth century. The style also is found in the French Cypriot repertory...

. During the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

, Burgundy
Duchy of Burgundy
The Duchy of Burgundy , was heir to an ancient and prestigious reputation and a large division of the lands of the Second Kingdom of Burgundy and in its own right was one of the geographically larger ducal territories in the emergence of Early Modern Europe from Medieval Europe.Even in that...

 became a major center for musical development. This was followed by the rise of chanson
Chanson
A chanson is in general any lyric-driven French song, usually polyphonic and secular. A singer specialising in chansons is known as a "chanteur" or "chanteuse" ; a collection of chansons, especially from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, is also known as a chansonnier.-Chanson de geste:The...

s and the Burgundian School
Burgundian School
The Burgundian School is a term used to denote a group of composers active in the 15th century in what is now northern and eastern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, centered on the court of the Dukes of Burgundy. The main names associated with this school are Guillaume Dufay, Gilles Binchois,...

. France is a very musical country.

Opera

The first French opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 may be Akébar roi du Mogol, first performed in Carpentras
Carpentras
Carpentras is a commune in the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France.It stands on the banks of the Auzon...

 in 1646. It was followed by the team of Pierre Perrin
Pierre Perrin
Pierre Perrin was a French poet and librettist.Sometimes known as L'Abbé Perrin although he never belonged to the clergy...

 and Cambert, whose Pastoral in Music, performed in Issy, was a success, and the pair moved to Paris to produce Pomone (1671) and Les Peines et les Plaisirs de l'Amour (1672).

Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste de Lully was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in...

, who had become well known for composing ballet
Ballet
Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...

s for Louis XIV
Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...

, began creating a French version of the Italian opera seria
Opera seria
Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to c. 1770...

, a kind of tragic opera known as tragédie lyrique or tragédie en musique - see (French lyric tragedy
French lyric tragedy
Tragédie en musique , also known as tragédie lyrique, is a genre of French opera introduced by Jean-Baptiste Lully and used by his followers until the second half of the eighteenth century. Operas in this genre are usually based on stories from Classical mythology or the Italian romantic epics of...

). His first was Cadmus from 1673. Lully's forays into operatic tragedy were accompanied by the pinnacle of French theatrical tragedy, led by Corneille
Pierre Corneille
Pierre Corneille was a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine...

 and Racine
Jean Racine
Jean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...

.

Lully also developed the common beat patterns used by conductors to this day, and was the first to take the role of leading the orchestra from the position of the first violin.

The French composer, Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...

, composed Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...

, one of the most well known and popular operas.

Romantic Era & Hector Berlioz

One of the major French composers of the time, and one of the most innovative composers of the early Romantic era, was Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...

.

In the late 19th century, pioneers like Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...

, Jules Massenet
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, Massenet's style went out of fashion, and many of his operas...

, Gabriel Fauré
Gabriel Fauré
Gabriel Urbain Fauré was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th century composers...

, Maurice Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...

 and Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...

 revitalized French music. The last two had an enormous impact on 20th century music - both in France and abroad - and influenced many major composers like Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...

 and Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

. Erik Satie
Erik Satie
Éric Alfred Leslie Satie was a French composer and pianist. Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde...

 was also a very significant composer from that era. His music is difficult to classify but sounds surprisingly ahead of its time.

20th Century

The early 20th century saw neo-classical music flourish in France, especially composers like Albert Roussel
Albert Roussel
Albert Charles Paul Marie Roussel was a French composer. He spent seven years as a midshipman, turned to music as an adult, and became one of the most prominent French composers of the interwar period...

 and Les Six
Les Six
Les six is a name, inspired by The Five, given in 1920 by critic Henri Collet in an article titled "" to a group of six composers working in Montparnasse whose music is often seen as a reaction against the musical style of Richard Wagner and impressionist music.-Members:Formally, the Groupe des...

, a group of musicians who gathered around Satie. Later in the century, Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...

, Henri Dutilleux
Henri Dutilleux
Henri Dutilleux is one of the most important French composers of the second half of the 20th century, producing work in the tradition of Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, and Albert Roussel, but in a style distinctly his own...

 and Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...

 proved influential. The latter was a leading figure of Serialism
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...

 while Messiaen incorporated Asian (particularly Indian) influences and bird song
Bird song
Bird vocalization includes both bird calls and bird songs. In non-technical use, bird songs are the bird sounds that are melodious to the human ear. In ornithology and birding, songs are distinguished by function from calls.-Definition:The distinction between songs and calls is based upon...

 and Dutilleux translated the innovations of Debussy, Bartók and Stravinsky into his own, very personal, musical idiom.

The most important French contribution to musical innovation of the past 35 years is a form of computer-assisted composition called "spectral music
Spectral music
Spectral music is a musical composition practice where compositional decisions are often informed by the analysis of sound spectra. Computer-based sound spectrum analysis using tools like DFT, FFT, and spectrograms...

". The astonishing technical advances of the spectralist composers in the 1970s are only recently beginning to achieve wide recognition in the United States; major composers in this vein include Gérard Grisey
Gérard Grisey
Gérard Grisey was a French composer of contemporary music.-Biography:Gérard Grisey was born in Belfort, France on 17 June 1946. He studied at the Trossingen Conservatory in Germany from 1963 to 1965 before entering the Conservatoire de Paris...

, Tristan Murail
Tristan Murail
Tristan Murail is a French composer. His father, Gérard Murail, is a poet and his mother, Marie-Thérèse Barrois, a journalist. One of his brothers, Lorris Murail, and his younger sister Elvire Murail, aka Moka, also write, and his younger sister Marie-Aude Murail is a French children's writer...

, and Claude Vivier
Claude Vivier
-Biography:Born to unknown parents in Montreal, Vivier was adopted at the age of three by a poor French-Canadian family. From the age of thirteen, he attended boarding schools run by the Marist Brothers, a religious order that prepared young boys for a vocation in the priesthood. At the age of...

.

Folk Music

Traditional styles of music have survived most in remote areas like the island of Corsica and mountainous Auvergne, as well as the more nationalistic regions of the Basques
Basque people
The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...

 and Bretons.

In many cases, folk traditions were revived in relatively recent years to cater to tourists. These groupes folkloriques tend to focus on very early 20th century melodies
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...

 and the use of the piano accordion
Piano accordion
A piano accordion is an accordion equipped with a right-hand keyboard similar to a piano or organ. Its acoustic mechanism is more similar to that of an organ than a piano, as they are both wind instruments, but the term "piano accordion"—coined by Guido Deiro in 1910—has remained the popular...

.

Paris

In 1900 in Paris, a new style of waltz emerged, the "Valse musette" an evolution of Bal-musette
Bal-musette
Bal-musette is a style of French music and dance that first became popular in Paris in the 1880s.Auvergnats settled in large numbers in the 5th, 11th, and 12th districts of Paris during the 19th century, opening cafés and bars where patrons danced the bourrée to the accompaniment of musette de...

 also known as "French Waltz". Aimable, Émile Vacher, Marcel Azzola
Marcel Azzola
Marcel Azzola is a French accordionist. During his career he has accompanied many of the most famous French singers of his era, including Boris Vian, Édith Piaf, Tino Rossi, Yves Montand, Juliette Gréco, Jean Sablon, Francis Lemarque, Gilbert Bécaud, and notably Jacques Brel Marcel Azzola (born...

, Yvette Horner, André Verchuren were famous accordionists who played valse musette. There is also Yann Tiersen
Yann Tiersen
Yann Tiersen is a musician from France. His musical career is split between studio albums, collaborations and film soundtracks with a distinctive sound that is always involved...

 and its Amélie (soundtrack)
Amélie (soundtrack)
Amélie is the soundtrack to the 2001 French film Amélie.Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet chanced upon the largely accordion and piano driven music of Yann Tiersen while driving with his production assistant who put on a CD he hadn't heard before. Greatly impressed, he immediately bought Tiersen's entire...

 of Amélie from Montmartre.

Western France

The West of France comprises the Pays de Nantes, the provinces of Vendée
Vendée
The Vendée is a department in the Pays-de-la-Loire region in west central France, on the Atlantic Ocean. The name Vendée is taken from the Vendée river which runs through the south-eastern part of the department.-History:...

, Anjou
Anjou
Anjou is a former county , duchy and province centred on the city of Angers in the lower Loire Valley of western France. It corresponds largely to the present-day département of Maine-et-Loire...

 and Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...

, and the Poitou-Charentes
Poitou-Charentes
Poitou-Charentes is an administrative region in central western France comprising four departments: Charente, Charente-Maritime, Deux-Sèvres and Vienne. The regional capital is Poitiers.-Politics:The regional council is composed of 56 members...

 region. Traditions of ballad
Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...

-singing, dance-songs and fiddle
Fiddle
The term fiddle may refer to any bowed string musical instrument, most often the violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music...

-playing have survived, predominantly in Poitou and the Vendée. Jérôme Bujeaud collected extensively in the area, and his 2-volume work "Chants et chansons populaires des provinces de l'ouest: Poitou
Poitou
Poitou was a province of west-central France whose capital city was Poitiers.The region of Poitou was called Thifalia in the sixth century....

, Saintonge
Saintonge
Saintonge is a small region on the Atlantic coast of France within the département Charente-Maritime, west and south of Charente in the administrative region of Poitou-Charentes....

, Aunis
Aunis
Aunis is a historical province of France, situated in the north-west of the department of Charente-Maritime. Its historic capital is La Rochelle, which took over from Castrum Allionis the historic capital which gives its name to the province....

 et Angoumois
Angoumois
Angoumois was a county and province of France, nearly corresponding today to the Charente département. Its capital was Angoulême....

" (Niort
Niort
Niort is a commune in the Deux-Sèvres department in western France.The Latin name of the city was Novioritum.The population of Niort is 60,486 and more than 137,000 people live in the urban area....

, 1866) remains the principal scholarly collection of music and songs. In recent decades John Wright and Claude Ribouillault (amongst others) have done much to collect, analyse and promote the surviving traditions.

The Marais Breton of Vendée is noted particularly for its tradition of veuze
Veuze
The veuze is a Breton bagpipe found traditionally in southeastern Brittany and in the northern part of the Vendée, particularly around Nantes, the Guérande peninsula, and Basse-Vilaine. The veuze has been mentioned in writings dating to the 16th century, and is thought to be the oldest of the...

 playing - which has been revived by the bagpipe-maker and player Thierry Bertrand - and for traditional singers such as Pierre Burgaud.

Folk dances specific to the West of France include the courante
Courante
The courante, corrente, coranto and corant are some of the names given to a family of triple metre dances from the late Renaissance and the Baroque era....

, or maraichine, and the bal saintongeais. Bourrée
Bourrée
The bourrée is a dance of French origin common in Auvergne and Biscay in Spain in the 17th century. It is danced in quick double time, somewhat resembling the gavotte. The main difference between the two is the anacrusis, or upbeat; a bourrée starts on the last beat of a bar, creating a...

s in triple time have been noted in the 19th century by Bujeaud, and more recently, in Angoumois. Circle- or chain-dances accompanied by caller-and-response singing have been noted in the West, and also in other regions such as Gascony
Gascony
Gascony is an area of southwest France that was part of the "Province of Guyenne and Gascony" prior to the French Revolution. The region is vaguely defined and the distinction between Guyenne and Gascony is unclear; sometimes they are considered to overlap, and sometimes Gascony is considered a...

, Normandy
Normandy
Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...

 and Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...

.

Notable contemporary folk musicians include Christian Pacher and Claude Ribouillault (Poitou) and the group La Marienne (Vendée.)

Central France

Central France includes the regions of Auvergne
Auvergne (province)
Auvergne was a historic province in south central France. It was originally the feudal domain of the Counts of Auvergne. It is now the geographical and cultural area that corresponds to the former province....

, Limousin
Limousin (région)
Limousin is one of the 27 regions of France. It is composed of three départements: Corrèze, Creuse and the Haute-Vienne.Situated largely in the Massif Central, as of January 1st 2008, the Limousin comprised 740,743 inhabitants on nearly 17 000 km2, making it the second least populated region of...

, Morvan
Morvan
The Morvan is a mountainous massif lying just to the west of the Côte d'Or escarpment in Burgundy, France. It is a northerly extension of the Massif Central and is of Variscan age. It is composed of granites and basalts and formed a promontory extending northwards into the Jurassic sea.-Music:The...

, Nivernais
Nivernais
Nivernais is former province of France, around the city of Nevers and the département of Nièvre.The raw climate and soils cause the area to be heavily wooded.- References :* Chamber's Encyclopedia Volume 10 page 50...

, Bourbonnais
Bourbonnais
Bourbonnais was a historic province in the centre of France that corresponded to the modern département of Allier, along with part of the département of Cher. Its capital was Moulins.-History:...

 and Berry
Berry (province)
Berry is a region located in the center of France. It was a province of France until the provinces were replaced by départements on 4 March 1790....

. The lands are the home to a significant bagpipe tradition, as well as the iconic hurdy gurdy
Hurdy gurdy
The hurdy gurdy or hurdy-gurdy is a stringed musical instrument that produces sound by a crank-turned rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to a violin...

 and the dance bourrée
Bourrée
The bourrée is a dance of French origin common in Auvergne and Biscay in Spain in the 17th century. It is danced in quick double time, somewhat resembling the gavotte. The main difference between the two is the anacrusis, or upbeat; a bourrée starts on the last beat of a bar, creating a...

. There are deep differences between the regions of Central France, with the Auvergne and Limousin retained the most vibrant folk traditions of the area. As an example of the area's diversity, the bourrée can come in either duple or triple meter; the latter is found in the south of the region, and is usually improvised with bagpipes
Bagpipes
Bagpipes are a class of musical instrument, aerophones, using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. Though the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe and Irish uilleann pipes have the greatest international visibility, bagpipes of many different types come from...

 and hurdy gurdy, while the former is found in the north and includes virtuoso players.

Bagpipe and Hurdy Gurdy

Main articles: Bagpipe and hurdy gurdy
Hurdy gurdy
The hurdy gurdy or hurdy-gurdy is a stringed musical instrument that produces sound by a crank-turned rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to a violin...



The hurdy gurdy, or vielle-à-roue, is essentially a mechanical violin, with keys or buttons instead of a finger board. It is made up of a curved, oval body, a set of keys and a curved handle, which is turned and connected to a wheel which bows the strings that are stopped by the keys. There is a moveable bridge, a variable number of drones and hidden sympathetic strings, all of which can also effect the sound. Simpler forms of the hurdy gurdy are also found in Spain, Hungary and Russia.

The bagpipe is found in a wide array of forms in France, which has more diversity in bagpipes than any other country. The cabrette and grande cornemuse from Auvergne
Auvergne (province)
Auvergne was a historic province in south central France. It was originally the feudal domain of the Counts of Auvergne. It is now the geographical and cultural area that corresponds to the former province....

 and Berry
Berry (province)
Berry is a region located in the center of France. It was a province of France until the provinces were replaced by départements on 4 March 1790....

 are the most well-known. These forms are found at least as far back as the 17th century. Prominent bagpipers include Bernard Blanc, Frédéric Paris and Philippe Prieur
Philippe Prieur
Philippe Prieur is a former professional footballer. He played as a striker.-External links:* at chamoisfc79.fr...

, as well as bandleader Jean Blanchard of La Grande Bande de Cornemuses and Quintette de Cornemuses. Frédéric Paris is also known as a member of the Duo Chabenat-Paris, a prominent duo who use elements like mixed polyphonic ensembles and melodies based on the bourrée. Bernard Blanc and Jean Blanchard, along with Eric Montbel from Lyons, were among the musicians who formed the basis of La Bamboche and Le Grand Rouge. It was these two bands who did more than anyone to revitalize the traditions of Central France during the 1970s folk revival. The festival of St. Chartier, a music festival
Music festival
A music festival is a festival oriented towards music that is sometimes presented with a theme such as musical genre, nationality or locality of musicians, or holiday. They are commonly held outdoors, and are often inclusive of other attractions such as food and merchandise vending machines,...

 held annually near Châteauroux
Châteauroux
Châteauroux is the capital of the Indre department in central France and the second-largest town in the province of Berry, after Bourges. Its residents are called Castelroussines or Castelroussins....

, has been a focal point for the music of Auvergne and Limousin.

The provinces of Morvan and Nivernais have produced some traditional stars, including Faubourg de Boignard and Les Ménétriers du Morvan, respectively. The Nivernais collector Achille Millien was also notable in the early part of the 20th century.

Basque Country

The music of the French Basque Country
Northern Basque Country
The French Basque Country or Northern Basque Country situated within the western part of the French department of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques constitutes the north-eastern part of the Basque Country....

 (east of the Basque Country) should be considered against a Pyrenean cultural background. Up to recent times and still ttun-ttun
Psalterium (instrument)
A psalterium , or tambourin à cordes, is a stringed musical instrument, the name of which means the same thing as the one of psaltery. In specific usage, this name denotes a form of long psaltery that is tuned to provide drone chords. Sometimes called a string drum, it is usually used as rhythm...

 and xirula
Xirula
The xirula xülüla in Zuberoan Basque; Gascon: flabuta; French: galoubet) is a small three hole flute usually made of wood akin to the Basque txistu or three-hole pipe, but more high pitched and strident, tuned to C and an octave higher than the silbote. The sound that flows from the flute has often...

 should be highlighted in traditional folk music (especially in the province of Soule
Soule
Soule is a former viscounty and French province and part of the present day Pyrénées-Atlantiques département...

) as a tabor and pipe like pair.

It's worth remembering the role of Mixel Etxekopar or Jean Mixel Bedaxagar as xirula players as well as traditional singers. Other popular performers like Benat Achiary
Benat Achiary
Beñat Achiary is a Basque vocal improviser who lives in southern France.He has released three songs from Gherasim Luca's "heroes-limite" on his CD "Seven Circles for Peter", released by German label FMP in 2004.-External links:****...

 take up a more experimental approach. These performers refer to a former tradition collected and restored by figures like Etxahun Iruri (1908–1979) where singing improviser poets (bertsolari
Bertsolari
A bertsolari is a singer of bertso, a musical verse in Basque tradition. The bertolaris are often found in pairs, in which a topic is sung extemporaneously in verses alternatively, but they can stage solo or group verse sessions too. It is usually sung to a slow tempo with long or short verses and...

s) played an important role in popular culture. Unfortunately, this bertsolari tradition has come almost to a halt, while some efforts are being made to restore it on new generations along the lines of the "southern" tradition, i.e. of the Spanish Basque Country.

Music from the Basque Country
Northern Basque Country
The French Basque Country or Northern Basque Country situated within the western part of the French department of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques constitutes the north-eastern part of the Basque Country....

 nowadays caters to almost all the tastes of music, with a wide range of music being played in Basque, from choral music (Oldarra in Biarritz
Biarritz
Biarritz is a city which lies on the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast, in south-western France. It is a luxurious seaside town and is popular with tourists and surfers....

) to elaborate music bands (e.g. Bidaia) to ska or hardcore trends, while it's much praised lately for the fine bare voices that have arisen with the likes of Maddi Oihenart, Maialen Errotabehere or Amaren Alabak, to mention but a few.

Corsica

Corsican polyphonic singing is perhaps the most unusual of the French regional music varieties. Sung by male trios, it is strongly harmonic and occasionally dissonant. Works can be either spiritual or secular. Modern groups include Canta u Populu Corsu, I Muvrini
I Muvrini
I Muvrini is a Corsican folk music group who sing traditional Corsican music in their native Corsican language.-History:The group was formed in the early 1980s by the brothers Jean-François Bernardini and Alain Bernardini who were born in the village of Tagliu-Isulacciu in the north of Corsica...

, Tavagna and Chjami Aghjalesi; some groups have been associated with Corsican nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

.

Corsican musical instrument
Musical instrument
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the...

s include the bagpipe (caramusa), 16-stringed lute
Lute
Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....

 (cetera), mandolin
Mandolin
A mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family . It descends from the mandore, a soprano member of the lute family. The mandolin soundboard comes in many shapes—but generally round or teardrop-shaped, sometimes with scrolls or other projections. A mandolin may have f-holes, or a single...

, fife
Fife (musical instrument)
A fife is a small, high-pitched, transverse flute that is similar to the piccolo, but louder and shriller due to its narrower bore. The fife originated in medieval Europe and is often used in military and marching bands. Someone who plays the fife is called a fifer...

 (pifana) and the diatonic accordion
Accordion
The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....

 (urganettu).

Brittany

Distinctly Celtic
Celtic music
Celtic music is a term utilised by artists, record companies, music stores and music magazines to describe a broad grouping of musical genres that evolved out of the folk musical traditions of the Celtic people of Western Europe...

 in character, the folk music of Lower Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...

 has had perhaps the most successful revival of its traditions, partly thanks to the city of Lorient
Lorient
Lorient, or L'Orient, is a commune and a seaport in the Morbihan department in Brittany in north-western France.-History:At the beginning of the 17th century, merchants who were trading with India had established warehouses in Port-Louis...

, which hosts France's most popular music festival.

The documented history of Breton music begins with the publication of Barzaz-Breizh in 1839. A collection of folk songs compiled by Hersart de la Villemarqué, Barzaz-Breizh re-branded and promoted Breton traditions and helped ensure their continuity.

Couples de sonneurs, consisting of a bombarde and biniou, is usually played at festoù-noz (fest-noz) celebrations (some are famous, like Printemps de Chateauneuf). It is swift dance music
Dance music
Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...

 and has an older vocal counterpart called kan ha diskan
Kan ha diskan
Kan ha diskan is likely the most common type of traditional music of Brittany. It is a vocal tradition . The style is the most commonly used to accompany dances...

. Unaccompanied call and response
Call and response (music)
In music, a call and response is a succession of two distinct phrases usually played by different musicians, where the second phrase is heard as a direct commentary on or response to the first...

 singing was interspersed with the gwerz
Gwerz
Gwerz is a type of folk song of Brittany, a Celtic region in France.In Breton music, the gwerz tells a story which can be epic, historical, or mythological. The stories are usually of a tragic nature. The gwerz is characterised by an often monotonous melody and many couplets, all in the Breton...

, a form of ballad
Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...

.

Probably the most popular form of Breton folk is the bagad
Bagad
A bagad is a Breton band, composed of bagpipes , bombards and drums . The pipe band tradition in Brittany was inspired by the Scottish example and has developed since the mid-20th century...

 pipe band, which features native instruments like biniou
Biniou
Binioù means bagpipe in the Breton language.There are two bagpipes called binioù in Brittany: the traditional binioù kozh and the binioù bras , which was brought into Brittany from Scotland in the late 19th century...

 and bombarde alongside drums and, in more modern groups, biniou braz pipes. Modern revivalists include Kevrenn Alre Bagad and Bagad Kemper.

Alan Stivell
Alan Stivell
Alan Stivell is a Breton musician and singer, recording artist and master of the celtic harp who from the early 1970s revived global interest in the Celtic harp and Celtic music as part of world music.- Background: learning Breton music and culture :Alan was born in the Auvergnat town of Riom...

 is perhaps the most influential folk-rock performer of continental Europe. After 1971's Renaissance of the Celtic Harp
Renaissance of the Celtic Harp
Renaissance de la Harpe Celtique or Renaissance of the Celtic Harp is a 1971 record album by the Breton master of the celtic harp Alan Stivell that revolutionised the connection between traditional folk music, modern rock music and world music....

, Breton and other Celtic traditional music achieved mainstream success internationally. With Dan Ar Bras
Dan Ar Braz
Dan Ar Braz, born Daniel Le Bras , is a French guitarist and the founder of Héritage des Celtes.- The apprenticeship years :...

, he then released Chemins de Terre
Chemins De Terre
Chemins de Terre was a folk rock album by Alan Stivell, originally released in 1973. It was produced by Franck Giboni. It was retitled From Celtic Roots... in England and Celtic Rock in Germany.- Track listing :...

(1974), which launched Breton folk-rock. This set the stage for stars like Malicorne
Malicorne
Malicorne may refer to:* Malicorne , a bandMalicorne is the name or part of the name of several communes in France:* Malicorne, Allier, in the Allier département* Malicorne-sur-Sarthe, in the Sarthe département...

 in the ensuing decades.

In later years much has been done to collect and popularize the musical traditions of the Pays Gallo of Upper Brittany
Upper Brittany
Upper Brittany is a term used to describe the eastern part of Brittany which is predominantly of a Romance culture and is associated with the Gallo language. The name is in counterpoint to Lower Brittany, the western part of the ancient province and present-day region, where the Breton language...

, for which the singer Bertran Ôbrée, his group Ôbrée Alie and the association DASTUM must take much credit. The songs of Upper Brittany are either in French or in Gallo
Gallo
Gallo can mean:*related to Gaul, as in Gallo-Roman culture*Gallo language, a regional language of France*Gallo , from Guatemala*Gallo Matese, a commune of 761 inhabitants in the province of Caserta, Italy...

.

Modern Breton folk music includes harpists like Anne-Marie Jan, Anne Auffret and Myrdhin, while singers Kristen Nikolas, Andrea Ar Gouilh and Yann-Fanch Kemener
Yann-Fañch Kemener
Yann-Fañch Kemener is a traditional singer from Britanny, born in Sainte-Tréphine , France.He took part in reviving Kan ha diskan in the 1970s and 1980s, especially with Erik Marchand...

 have become mainstream stars. Instrumental bands, however, have been the most successful, including Gwerz, Bleizi Ruz, Strobinell, Sonerien Du and Tud
TUD
TUD can refer to:*The Darmstadt University of Technology *The Dresden University of Technology...

.

French Caribbean

The Zouk
Zouk
Zouk is a style of rhythmic music originating from the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe & Martinique. Zouk means "party" or "festival" in the local Antillean Creole of French, although the word originally referred to, and is still used to refer to, a popular dance, based on the Polish dance, the...

 is a style of rhythmic music originating from the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe is an archipelago located in the Leeward Islands, in the Lesser Antilles, with a land area of 1,628 square kilometres and a population of 400,000. It is the first overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. As with the other overseas departments, Guadeloupe...

 and Martinique
Martinique
Martinique is an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, with a land area of . Like Guadeloupe, it is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. To the northwest lies Dominica, to the south St Lucia, and to the southeast Barbados...

. Zouk means "party" or "festival" in the local Antillean Creole
Antillean Creole
Antillean Creole is a creole language with a vocabulary based on French. It is spoken primarily in the Lesser Antilles. Its grammar and vocabulary also include elements of Carib and African languages. Antillean Creole is related to Haitian Creole, but has a number of distinctive features; they are...

 of French, although the word originally referred to, and is still used to refer to, a popular dance, based on the Polish dance, the mazurka
Mazurka
The mazurka is a Polish folk dance in triple meter, usually at a lively tempo, and with accent on the third or second beat.-History:The folk origins of the mazurek are two other Polish musical forms—the slow machine...

, that was introduced to the French Caribbean in the 19th Century.

Today, there is an alternative of Zouk influenced by the American R&B. It is a mixture of R&B and Zouk Love. This trend has taken birth in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 with artists such as Slaï, Thierry Cham, Jane Fostin, Ali Angel, Medhy costs, Nichols, Kimberlite Zouk, Warren, Marvin, Kaysha, Elizio, Teeya, Soumia Linsha and etc. .... but it is also Jean-Michel Rod is the precursor of Zouk R&B (Zouk RNB, Zouk R'NB) or "américanisé" with their song "Le Ou Lov", "Sof will," "Stop", "Cigaret", "Chut j'taime" "Mwen'm not," "And I love her" and "Ella". This trend seems to now the accession of the French public due to the success of Slaï, Thierry Cham, Medhy costs, and Pearl Déesses Lama. La Compagnie Créole
La Compagnie Creole
La Compagnie Créole is a popular French pop band from French Guiana and the French West Indies, who started singing in the 1980s. They originally started singing in Creole but quickly adopted French as their main language...

 is a popular French zouk band.

Popular music

The late 19th century saw the dawn of the music hall
Music hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...

 when Yvette Guilbert
Yvette Guilbert
Yvette Guilbert was a French cabaret singer and actress of the Belle Époque.-Biography:...

 was a major star. The era lasted through to the 1930s and saw the likes of Félix Mayol
Félix Mayol
Félix Mayol was a French singer and entertainer.-Career:Mayol was born in Toulon, France. His parents were both amateur singers and actors, who arranged for Felix to make his debut stage at six years of age....

, Lucienne Boyer
Lucienne Boyer
Lucienne Boyer was a French diseuse and singer, best known for her song "Parlez-moi d'amour". Her impresario was Bruno Coquatrix.-Early career:...

, Marie-Louise Damien
Marie-Louise Damien
Marie-Louise Damien was a French singer and actress better known by the stage name Damia.-Robert Hollard:...

, Marie Dubas
Marie Dubas
Marie Dubas was a music-hall singer, diseuse and comedienne.Born in Paris, France, Marie Dubas began her career as a stage actress but became famous as a singer. Using the great Yvette Guilbert as her model, Dubas started singing in the small cabarets of Montmartre mixing comedy into her routine...

, Fréhel
Fréhel
Fréhel was a French singer and actress.-Biography:Born in Paris, France to a poor and dysfunctional Breton family, Marguerite Boulc'h was a child left to a life on the streets in the dark side of Paris...

, Georges Guibourg
Georges Guibourg
Georges Guibourg was a French singer, author, writer, playwright, and actor, George Guibourg, alias Georgius, alias Theodore Crapulet, was one of the most popular and versatile performers in Paris for more than 50 years....

, Tino Rossi
Tino Rossi
Tino Rossi was a singer and film actor.Born Constantino Rossi in Ajaccio, Corsica, France, he became a tenor of French cabaret and one of the great romantic idols of his time. Gifted with an operatic voice, a "Latin Lover" persona made him a movie star as well...

, Jean Sablon
Jean Sablon
Jean Sablon was a popular French singer and actor.The son of a composer, with brothers and sisters who had successful careers of their own in musical entertainment, Jean Sablon studied piano at the Lyceé Charlemagne in Paris...

, Charles Trenet
Charles Trenet
Charles Trenet was a French singer and songwriter, most famous for his recordings from the late 1930s until the mid-1950s, though his career continued through the 1990s...

, Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...

 and Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Auguste Chevalier was a French actor, singer, entertainer and a noted Sprechgesang performer. He is perhaps best known for his signature songs, including Louise, Mimi, Valentine, and Thank Heaven for Little Girls and for his films including The Love Parade and The Big Pond...

. During the 50s and 60s, it was the golden age of Chanson Française: Dalida
Dalida
Dalida , born with Italian name of Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti, was a world-famous singer and actress born in Egypt with Italian origins but naturalised French with the name Yolanda Gigliotti. She spent her early years in Egypt amongst the Italian Egyptian community, but she lived most of her adult...

, Monique Serf
Monique Serf
Monique Andrée Serf , known as Barbara , was a popular French female singer...

 (Barbara), Georges Brassens
Georges Brassens
Georges Brassens , 22 October 1921 – 29 October 1981), was a French singer-songwriter and poet.Brassens was born in Sète, a town in southern France near Montpellier...

, Léo Ferré
Léo Ferré
Léo Ferré was a Franco-Monegasque poet, composer, singer and musician.Born in Monaco, Ferré mixed love and melancholy with moral anarchy, lyricism with slang, rhyming verse with prose monologues...

, Charles Aznavour
Charles Aznavour
Charles Aznavour, OC is an Armenian-French singer, songwriter, actor, public activist and diplomat. Besides being one of France's most popular and enduring singers, he is also one of the best-known singers in the world...

, Alain Barrière
Alain Barrière
Alain Barrière is a French singer, who has been active since the 1950s and is known for participating in the 1963 Eurovision Song Contest.- Early life :...

 and Jacques Brel
Jacques Brel
Jacques Brel was a Belgian singer-songwriter who composed and performed literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs that generated a large, devoted following in France initially, and later throughout the world. He was widely considered a master of the modern chanson...

.

American and British rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

 was also popular in the 1950s and 60s, and indigenous rock achieved some domestic success. Punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...

 and heavy metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...

 found some listeners. Beginning in the 1980s, Les Rita Mitsouko
Les Rita Mitsouko
Les Rita Mitsouko was a French pop rock group formed by guitarist Fred Chichin and singer Catherine Ringer. The duo first performed as Rita Mitsouko at Gibus Club, Paris in 1980...

 became very popular throughout Europe with their unique blending of punk, new wave, dance and cabaret elements.

In particular, electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...

, as exemplified by Jean Michel Jarre
Jean Michel Jarre
Jean Michel André Jarre is a French composer, performer and music producer. He is a pioneer in the electronic, ambient and New Age genres, and known as an organiser of outdoor spectacles of his music featuring lights, laser displays, and fireworks.Jarre was raised in Lyon by his mother and...

, achieved a wide French audience. The French electro-pop duos Air and Daft Punk
Daft Punk
Daft Punk are an electronic music duo consisting of French musicians Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter . Daft Punk reached significant popularity in the late 1990s house movement in France and met with continued success in the years following, combining elements of house with synthpop...

 and techno artists Laurent Garnier
Laurent Garnier
Laurent Garnier , is a French techno music producer and DJ. Garnier began DJ-ing in Manchester during the late 1980s. By the following decade, he had a broad stylistic range, able to span deep house, Detroit techno, trance and jazz...

 and David Guetta
David Guetta
Pierre David Guetta , known professionally as David Guetta , is a French house music producer and DJ. Originally a DJ at nightclubs during the 1980s and 1990s, he co-founded Gum Productions and released his first album, Just a Little More Love, in 2002. Later, he released Guetta Blaster and Pop Life...

 found a wide audience in the late 1990s and early first decade of the 21st century, both locally and internationally. Groups such as Justice
Justice (French band)
Justice is a French electronic music duo consisting of Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay . The duo is one of the most successful groups on Ed Banger Records and is managed by the label's head, Pedro Winter...

, M83
M83 (band)
M83 is a musical act by French musician Anthony Gonzalez. It is named after a spiral galaxy, Messier 83. The band was founded in 2001 by Gonzalez and former member Nicolas Fromageau in Antibes, France...

, Phoenix
Phoenix (band)
Phoenix is a Grammy Award winning French indie rock band from Versailles, founded by Thomas Mars, Deck d'Arcy, Christian Mazzalai and Laurent Brancowitz.-Formation and early years:...

 and Télépopmusik
Télépopmusik
Télépopmusik is a French electronic music trio, composed of Fabrice Dumont , Stephan Haeri , and Christophe Hetier....

 continue to enjoy success.

Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

n rai
Raï
Raï is a form of folk music that originated in Oran, Algeria from Bedouin shepherds, mixed with Spanish, French, African and Arabic musical forms, which dates back to the 1930s....

 also found a large French audience, especially Khaled
Khaled (musician)
Khaled Hadj Ibrahim , better known as Khaled, is a raï singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist born in Sidi El Houari in Oran Province of Algeria...

. Moroccan
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

 chaabi and gnawa
Gnawa
The Gnawa people originated from North and West Africa; to be precise the ancient Ghanaian Empire of Ouagadougou .This name Gnawa is taken from one of the indigenous languages of the Sahara Desert called Tamazight...

 are also popular.

American hip hop music
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...

 was exported to France in the 1980s, and French rappers
Rapping
Rapping refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into “content”, “flow” , and “delivery”...

 and DJs, like David Guetta
David Guetta
Pierre David Guetta , known professionally as David Guetta , is a French house music producer and DJ. Originally a DJ at nightclubs during the 1980s and 1990s, he co-founded Gum Productions and released his first album, Just a Little More Love, in 2002. Later, he released Guetta Blaster and Pop Life...

 and MC Solaar
MC Solaar
MC Solaar is a francophone hip hop and rap artist. He is one of the most internationally popular and influential French rappers....

, also had some success.

Chanson

Chanson Française is the typical style of French music (chanson means "song" in French) and is still very popular in France. Some of the most important artists included Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...

, Monique Serf
Monique Serf
Monique Andrée Serf , known as Barbara , was a popular French female singer...

 (Barbara), Georges Brassens
Georges Brassens
Georges Brassens , 22 October 1921 – 29 October 1981), was a French singer-songwriter and poet.Brassens was born in Sète, a town in southern France near Montpellier...

, Léo Ferré
Léo Ferré
Léo Ferré was a Franco-Monegasque poet, composer, singer and musician.Born in Monaco, Ferré mixed love and melancholy with moral anarchy, lyricism with slang, rhyming verse with prose monologues...

, Charles Aznavour
Charles Aznavour
Charles Aznavour, OC is an Armenian-French singer, songwriter, actor, public activist and diplomat. Besides being one of France's most popular and enduring singers, he is also one of the best-known singers in the world...

, Mireille Mathieu
Mireille Mathieu
Mireille Mathieu is a French chanteuse, and pop singer. Hailed in the French press as the successor to Édith Piaf, she has achieved great commercial success, recording over 1200 songs in nine different languages, with more than 120 million records sold worldwide.-Childhood to early...

, Gilbert Bécaud
Gilbert Bécaud
Gilbert Bécaud was a French singer, composer and actor, known as "Monsieur 100,000 Volts" for his energetic performances. His best-known hits are "Nathalie" and "Et Maintenant", a 1961 release that became an English language hit as "What Now My Love"...

, Salvatore Adamo
Salvatore Adamo
Salvatore, Knight Adamo, simply known as Adamo is a Belgian – Italian composer and singer of ballads, mainly in French, but also in other languages such as German, Italian and Spanish. He had commercial success during the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, but...

 and Jacques Brel
Jacques Brel
Jacques Brel was a Belgian singer-songwriter who composed and performed literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs that generated a large, devoted following in France initially, and later throughout the world. He was widely considered a master of the modern chanson...

 plus the more art-house musicians like Brigitte Fontaine
Brigitte Fontaine
Brigitte Fontaine, born in 1939 in Morlaix in the Brittany region of France, is a singer of avant-garde music. During the course of her career she has employed numerous unusual musical styles, melding rock and roll, folk, jazz, electronica, spoken word poetry and world rhythms...

. One of the most loved, respected and internationally successful vocalists of the genre is Dalida
Dalida
Dalida , born with Italian name of Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti, was a world-famous singer and actress born in Egypt with Italian origins but naturalised French with the name Yolanda Gigliotti. She spent her early years in Egypt amongst the Italian Egyptian community, but she lived most of her adult...

. In December 1968, she was awarded the Médaille de la Présidence de la République by Général de Gaulle, the only person from the music industry to have received this accolade.She also released what is widely regarded as the first French disco single, "J’attendrai", thus inspiring a new generation of singers. She was the only Western singer ever to break through the barrier separating Arab and Western music and achieve true success (as opposed to niche popularity) in an Arab country. She also released the first French medley single, "Génération ‘78", a disco-fused combination of her biggest hit singles to date.It also became the first French single to be accompanied by a video clip. Many believe that Dalida's video performances and onstage charisma launched a new era for not only the French Music Industry but also for the world music and entertainment industry. It is supposed that American pop star Madonna was inspired by Dalida's innovative style and colourful stage presence to create her hit videos. Also during the 1950s one of the more representative of Montmartre cabaret singers was Suzanne Robert.

During the 1970s, new artists modernized the chanson Française (Joe Dassin
Joe Dassin
Joseph Ira Dassin , more commonly known as Joe Dassin, was an American singer-songwriter best known for his French songs of the 1960s and 1970s.-Biography:...

, Michel Fugain
Michel Fugain
Michel Fugain is a French singer and composer. Originally he released music along with his singers and dancers entitled "Le Big Bazar" but went for a more solo approach 1977. In 1969 he published his first album: Je n'aurai pas le temps...

, Renaud
Renaud
Renaud, born Renaud Séchan, is a French singer, songwriter and actor.Renaud may also refer to:* Renaud , a male French given name* Renaud , a 1783 opera by Antonio Sacchini* Renaud, Quebec, part of Laval, Quebec...

, Francis Cabrel
Francis Cabrel
Francis Cabrel is a well-known French singer-songwriter and guitarist. Inspired heavily by Bob Dylan, he has released a number of albums falling mostly within the realm of folk, with occasional forays into blues or country. Several of his songs, such as "L'encre de tes yeux" and "Petite Marie"...

, Alain Souchon
Alain Souchon
Alain Souchon is a French singer, songwriter and actor. He has released 15 albums and has played roles in seven films.-Profile:...

, Jacques Higelin
Jacques Higelin
Jacques Joseph Victor Higelin is a French pop singer who rose to prominence in the early 1970s. Early in his career, many of Higelin's songs were effectively blacklisted from French radio because of his controversial left wing political beliefs, and his association with socialist groups...

, Alain Chamfort
Alain Chamfort
Alain Chamfort, born Alain Le Govic, is a French singer of Breton origin, born on 2 March 1949 in Paris.He was a promising pianist in his youth, and the piano became his instrument of choice...

) and also in the 80s (Étienne Daho
Étienne Daho
Étienne Daho is a French singer, songwriter and record producer who has released a number of synth-driven and rock-surf influenced pop hit singles since 1981.- Career :...

, Têtes Raides) till now (Mano Solo
Mano Solo
Mano Solo , born Emmanuel Cabut, was a French singer. He was born in Châlons-sur-Marne on 24 April 1963 to the illustrator Cabu and Isabelle Monin, co-founder of the ecology-related magazine, La Gueule ouverte....

, Matthieu Chedid
Matthieu Chedid
Matthieu Chedid is a French rock singer-songwriter and guitar player.-Biography:...

, Benjamin Biolay
Benjamin Biolay
Benjamin Biolay is a French singer, songwriter, musician, actor and record producer. He is the brother of singer Coralie Clément, whose two albums he wrote and produced, and the ex-husband of Chiara Mastroianni, the daughter of Catherine Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni.His low-key vocal style is...

, Jean-Louis Murat
Jean-Louis Murat
Not to be confused with Jean-Paul MaratJean-Louis Murat is the pseudonym of the French singer / songwriter Jean-Louis Bergheaud. He spent much of his childhood with his grandparents in Murat-le-Quaire.- Albums :...

, Miossec
Miossec
Christophe Miossec is a Breton singer and songwriter born in Brest, Brittany, France on December 24, 1964.-Beginnings:Christophe Miossec was not new to the world of music when he met his first great success. Between 14 and 17, he was in a teenage band, Printemps Noir , touring around Brest...

, Mathieu Boogaerts
Mathieu Boogaerts
Mathieu Boogaerts is a French singer-songwriter.-Biography:After many years travelling the world, mostly Africa , he started penning some naive, minimalistic ditties...

, Daniel Darc
Daniel Darc
Daniel Darc , born Daniel Rozoum, is a French singer, who has achieved success with his band Taxi Girl between 1978 and 1986, and also as a solo artist...

, Vincent Delerm
Vincent Delerm
Vincent Delerm is a French singer-songwriter, pianist and composer. He is the son of the writer Philippe Delerm....

).

The more commercial and pop part of "chanson" is called "variété", and included Francis Cabrel, Alain Souchon, Laurent Voulzy
Laurent Voulzy
Laurent Voulzy is a French singer and composer.-Biography:Voulzy originally led the English-pop-influenced Le Temple de Vénus before joining Pascal Danel as guitarist from 1969 to 1974...

 and Jean-Jacques Goldman
Jean-Jacques Goldman
Jean-Jacques Goldman is a Grammy Awards-winning French singer-songwriter. He is hugely popular in the French-speaking world, and since 2003 was the second-highest-grossing French living pop singer, after Johnny Hallyday.- Biography :...

. More recently, the success of the Star Academy
Star Academy
Star Academy is a highly successful television show format based on the Spanish format "Operación Triunfo" produced by Endemol, that has been broadcast in over 50 countries...

 television show has spawned a new generation of young pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...

 stars including Jenifer Bartoli
Jenifer Bartoli
Jenifer Yaël Dadouche-Bartoli , better known as simply Jenifer, is a pop singer who has, since 2002, had a number of hit singles in the French, Belgium and Swiss charts...

 and Nolwenn Leroy
Nolwenn Leroy
Nolwenn Leroy, , is a French singer and songwriter, discovered by the French television reality show Star Academy. She is best known for her two Number One singles "Cassé" and "Nolwenn Ohwo!"....

; and the superstar status of diva
Diva
A diva is a celebrated female singer. The term is used to describe a woman of outstanding talent in the world of opera, and, by extension, in theatre, cinema and popular music. The meaning of diva is closely related to that of "prima donna"....

 Mylene Farmer
Mylène Farmer
Mylène Farmer, , born Marie-Hélène Jeanne Gautier, , , is a French singer, songwriter, occasional actress and author....

 inspired pop rock
Pop rock
Pop rock is a music genre which mixes a catchy pop style and light lyrics in its guitar-based rock songs. There are varying definitions of the term, ranging from a slower and mellower form of rock music to a subgenre of pop music...

 performers like Zazie
Zazie
Zazie is a French singer and songwriter. Zazie co-produces all her albums.-Early life:...

, Lorie
Lorie
Laure Pester, professionally known as Lorie, is a French singer. Her fame can be attributed to producer, songwriter and composer Johnny Williams and her father–manager Dominique Pester...

 and Alizée
Alizée
Alizée Jacotey is a French singer, known professionally by her given name Alizée She was discovered by Mylène Farmer, following her winning performance in the talent show, Graines de Star, in 1999...

, and R&B-influenced singers like Nadiya
Nâdiya
Nâdiya is a French R&B singer.-Early life:Nâdiya comes from a family of Algerian origin in the region of Mostaganem. She is the youngest in a family of 8 children. Her brothers are named: Kader Touati, Baklavah Waheb and her sisters: Malika, Sidartha and Karla...

 and Ophelie Winter
Ophélie Winter
Ophélie Kleerekoper-Winter is a French singer and actress.- Biography :Her father David Alexandre Winter, was a Dutch pop singer during the 1970s, while her mother was a French fashion model, who is now her agent...

.

Rock 'N Roll

In the 1950s, Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

 and rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

 made inroads in the French music scene. It produced stars like Johnny Hallyday
Johnny Hallyday
Johnny Hallyday is a French singer and actor. An icon in the French-speaking world since the beginning of his career, he was considered by some to have been the French Elvis Presley. He was married for 15 years to one of the most popular French female singers: Sylvie Vartan...

, Richard Anthony
Richard Anthony (French singer)
Richard Anthony is a French singer, born 13 January 1938 in Cairo, Egypt, as Ricardo Btesh.-Biography:Richard's father was an industrialist, and his mother was the daughter of an English diplomat...

, Dick Rivers
Dick Rivers
Dick Rivers is a French singer and actor who has been performing since the early 1960s. He was an important figure in introducing rock and roll music in France. He is known for being an admirer of Elvis Presley, who highly influenced both his singing and looks...

 and Claude François
Claude François
Claude François was a French pop singer, songwriter and dancer. He wrote "Comme d'habitude," the original version of "My Way."-Early life:...

, the popular yé-yé
Yé-yé
Yé-yé was a style of pop music that emerged from France, Québec and Spain in the early 1960s. The term "yé-yé" derived from "yeah! yeah!" The style expanded worldwide, due to the success of figures such as the French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg....

 girls like Sylvie Vartan
Sylvie Vartan
Sylvie Vartan is a French singer. She was one of the first rock girls in France. Vartan was the most productive and active of the yé-yé style artists, considered as the toughest-sounding of those. Her performance often featured elaborate show-dance choreography. She made many appearances on French...

 and France Gall
France Gall
France Gall is a popular French yé-yé singer.Gall was married to, and had a successful singing career in partnership with, French singer-songwriter Michel Berger....

 and artists who fuse various music genres like Dalida
Dalida
Dalida , born with Italian name of Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti, was a world-famous singer and actress born in Egypt with Italian origins but naturalised French with the name Yolanda Gigliotti. She spent her early years in Egypt amongst the Italian Egyptian community, but she lived most of her adult...

, who performed multi-lingual and ethnic styles like Italian style music in 50s; twist, pop and rock in the 60s (and later pop, disco, reggae, new wave and rock in the 70s and 80s). These were popular female teen idol
Teen idol
A teen idol is a celebrity who is widely idolized by teenagers; he or she is often young but not necessarily teenaged. Often teen idols are actors or pop singers, but some sports figures have an appeal to teenagers. Some teen idols began their careers as child actors...

s, and included Françoise Hardy
Françoise Hardy
Françoise Madeleine Hardy is a French singer, actress and astrologer. Hardy is an iconic figure in fashion, music and style. She is married to the singer and movie actor Jacques Dutronc.-Biography:...

, who was the first to write her own songs.

Singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg, born Lucien Ginsburg was a French singer-songwriter, actor and director. Gainsbourg's extremely varied musical style and individuality make him difficult to categorize...

 began as a jazz musician in the 1950s and spanned several eras of French popular music including pop, rock, reggae, new wave, disco and even hip hop filtered through his unique sense of black humor, heavily laden with sex.

Though rock was not extremely popular until the 70s, there were innovative musicians in France as the psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music that is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues rock bands in United States and the United Kingdom...

 trend was peaking worldwide. Jean-Pierre Massiera's Les Maledictus Sound (1968) and Aphrodite's Child
Aphrodite's Child
Aphrodite's Child was a Greek progressive rock band formed in 1967, by Vangelis Papathanassiou , Demis Roussos , Loukas Sideras , and Anargyros "Silver" Koulouris . Their band's name was derived from the title of a track from another Mercury act, Dick Campbell, from his Sings Where It's At album...

's 666 were the most influential. Later came bands such as Magma
Magma (band)
Magma is a French progressive rock band founded in Paris in 1969 by classically trained drummer Christian Vander, who claimed as his inspiration a "vision of humanity's spiritual and ecological future" that profoundly disturbed him. In the course of their first album, the band tells the story of a...

, Martin Circus, Au Bonheur des Dames
Au Bonheur des Dames
Au Bonheur des Dames is the eleventh novel in the Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola. It was first serialized in the periodical Gil Blas and published in novel form by Charpentier in 1883....

, Trust
Trust (band)
Trust is a French rock band closely associated with both AC/DC and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal.-History:Trust was founded in 1977 by:* Bernard "Bernie" Bonvoisin * Norbert "Nono" Krief...

, Téléphone
Téléphone
Téléphone was a French rock band formed in 1976 by Jean-Louis Aubert , Louis Bertignac , Corine Marienneau and Richard Kolinka ....

, Noir Désir
Noir Désir
Noir Désir was a French rock band from Bordeaux. They were active during the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, and have had two albums certified double platinum in France and three certified gold. They have been an influence on numerous French musicians including Cali, Louise Attaque and Miossec...

, and musicians Marcel Dadi
Marcel Dadi
Marcel Dadi was a Tunisia-born Jewish French guitarist known for his finger-picking style which faithfully recreated the instrumental styles of American guitarists such as Chet Atkins, Merle Travis and Jerry Reed...

, Paul Personne
Paul Personne
Paul Personne is a French blues singer and guitarist.-Studio albums:* Paul Personne * Exclusif * Barjoland * 24/24...

 and Bireli Lagrene
Biréli Lagrène
Biréli Lagrène is a French guitarist and bassist. He came to prominence in the 1980s for his Django Reinhardt-influenced style on the classical guitar, as well as for being a jazz fusion virtuoso on the electric guitar...

.

In the early 70s, Breton musician Alan Stivell
Alan Stivell
Alan Stivell is a Breton musician and singer, recording artist and master of the celtic harp who from the early 1970s revived global interest in the Celtic harp and Celtic music as part of world music.- Background: learning Breton music and culture :Alan was born in the Auvergnat town of Riom...

 (Renaissance de la Harpe Celtique) launched the field of French folk-rock by combining psychedelic and progressive rock sounds with Breton and Celtic folk styles.

Progressive Rock 'N Roll

France became one of the leading producers of prog rock in the 1970s. Aficionados worldwide were enamoured by recordings like Ange
Ange
Ange is a French progressive rock band formed in September 1969 by the Décamps brothers, Francis and Christian .-History:...

's Le Cimetiere des arlequins
Le Cimetière des arlequins
Le Cimetière des arlequins is the second album by the French progressive rock band Ange, released in 1973.- Track listing :# "Ces gens-là" – 4:45# "Aujourd'hui c'est la fête chez l'apprenti-sorcier" – 3:30...

, Pulsar
Pulsar (band)
Pulsar is a French progressive rock band whose influences include Pink Floyd and King Crimson, plus classical musicians such as Gustav Mahler.During the early 1980s, the group performed and composed the music for a Franco‑Austrian musical theatre production...

's Halloween, Shylock's Ile de Fievre, Atoll
Atoll (band)
Atoll is a French progressive rock band.-Discography:* 1974 : Musiciens Magiciens* 1975 : L'Araignée-Mal* 1977 : Tertio* 1979 : Rock Puzzle* 1989 : L'Océan* 1990 : Tokyo, C'est Fini * 2003 : Illian - J'entends Gronder La Terre...

's L'Araignee-Mal and Eskaton
Eskaton
Eskaton is a defunct vanity record label created by Coil, exclusively for albums put out by the group and their friends. Its brother labels are Threshold House and Chalice....

's Ardeur. Most well-known, however, may be the band Magma
Magma (band)
Magma is a French progressive rock band founded in Paris in 1969 by classically trained drummer Christian Vander, who claimed as his inspiration a "vision of humanity's spiritual and ecological future" that profoundly disturbed him. In the course of their first album, the band tells the story of a...

 which created its own genre, Zeuhl music
Zeuhl
Zeuhl means celestial in Kobaïan, the constructed language created by Christian Vander. Originally solely applied to the music of Vander's band, Magma, the term zeuhl was eventually used to describe the similar music produced by French bands, beginning in the mid-1970s...

.

1980s

In the 1980s, French rock spawned myriad styles, many closely connected with other Francophone musical scenes in Switzerland, Canada and especially Belgium. Pub rock
Pub rock (UK)
Pub rock was a rock music genre that developed in the mid 1970s in the United Kingdom. A back-to-basics movement, pub rock was a reaction against progressive and glam rock. Although short-lived, pub rock was notable for rejecting stadium venues and for returning live rock to the small pubs and...

 (Telephone), psychobilly
Psychobilly
Psychobilly is a fusion genre of rock music that mixes elements of punk rock, rockabilly, and other genres. It is one of several subgenres of rockabilly which also include thrashabilly, trashabilly, punkabilly, surfabilly and gothabilly...

 (La Muerte
La Muerte
La Muerte is the sixth studio album by Dutch death metal band Gorefest. It was released in 2005 on Nuclear Blast Records. It was also released by Night of the Vinyl Dead in May 2006 as a double black vinyl with a colour insert...

), pop punk
Pop punk
Pop punk is a fusion music genre that combines elements of punk rock with pop music, to varying degrees. Allmusic describes the genre as a strand of alternative rock, which typically merges pop melodies with speedy punk tempos, chord changes and loud guitars...

 (Les Thugs
Les Thugs
Les Thugs are a punk band from France. The band were formed in 1983 with five members and were soon reduced to four in the same year: Eric Sourice on guitar and lead vocals, Thierry Meanard on guitar, Christophe Sourice on drums, and Gerald Chabaud on bass up until 1983. Chabaud was replaced by...

), synth pop and punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...

 (Bérurier Noir
Bérurier Noir
Bérurier noir is a French punk band formed in Paris in 1983 by Loran , François and Dédé . They called themselves "noir" for the color of mourning and for anarchy and "Bérurier" after the character from the novels of Frédéric Dard...

, Bijou and Gill Dougherty
Gill Dougherty
Gill Dougherty is a French singer and song writer, heavily influenced by 70s and 80s rock, who was born April 1961 in Toulouse.At the end of the seventies, punk rock was sweeping through France and he found inspiration with The Jam, The Clash, Sex Pistols, The B-52's, and The Ramones In France, he...

) were among the styles represented in this era.

Punk rock had arisen in the 1970s and continued into the next decade, perhaps best represented by Oberkampf
Oberkampf (band)
Oberkampf were a French punk rock band formed in 1979 by Joe Hell , Pat Kebra , Buck-Dali and Dominik Descoubes . Following the release of their first independent single "Couleurs Sur Paris" in February 1981, Oberkampf signed to Virgin records. They went on to record an album in 1982, followed by...

 and Métal Urbain
Métal Urbain
Métal Urbain was one of the first French punk groups, formed in 1976 in Paris.-Career:They were heavily influenced by The Clash and The Sex Pistols on one hand, and on the other by an electro approach related to "Metal Machine Music" by Lou Reed...

. 80s progressive rock peaked early in the decade, with Dun
Dun
Dun is now used both as a generic term for a fort and also for a specific variety of Atlantic roundhouse...

's Eros
Eros (Dün album)
Eros is the name of the first recording made by the French progressive rock band Dün. They released this record on a French label called Soleil Atreides in 1981. The album apparently never received distribution to wider channels, and, as a result, is incredibly rare...

, Emeraude's Geoffroy and Terpandre's Terpandre, all from 1981, representing the genre's pinnacle.

Heavy metal

French heavy metal bands include Hacride
Hacride
Hacride is a French heavy metal band. Formed in 2001 with musicians coming from an array of different bands, musical backgrounds and styles their sound has evolved from the raw extremities and odd time signatures of technical death metal to one that is more progressive and...

, Eths
Eths
Eths is a French Metalcore band from Marseille.-The beginning:Staif joined by Greg, formed the band What's the fuck in 1996. The following year, Candice joined the band which was renamed Melting Point....

, Loudblast
Loudblast
Loudblast is a Death/Thrash band that pioneered the genres in France, and one of the most important French metal bands of the 1990s.The band began in 1986 in the northern city of Lille. Its first recording was a split CD with the Nice based band Agressor. They have released eight albums on the...

, Carcariass
Carcariass
Carcariass is a Swiss-French melodic / technical death metal band. The name Carcariass is taken from Carcharodon carcharias, the great white shark.-History:...

, Massacra
Massacra
Massacra was one of France's leading death/thrash metal bands in the early nineties.After recording three demos in the 1980s, they finally landed a deal with Shark Records from Germany, and released their famous debut, 'Final Holocaust' in 1990...

, Dagoba
Dagoba (band)
Dagoba is a French industrial metal/groove metal band formed in 2000 by vocalist Shawter out of a previous band.-Biography:In 2001, Dagoba signed on Enternote Records and recorded its first EP, Release the Fury, in digipak format and accompanied by a video for "Rush"...

, Gorod
Gorod (band)
Gorod is a technical death metal band from Bordeaux, France. They formed in 1997 under the name Gorgasm, releasing their debut album Neurotripsicks on Deadsun Records in 2004...

, Kronos
Kronos (band)
Kronos is a brutal death metal band from France. Their name is a reference to the titan Cronus, the father of Zeus in greek mythology.-Lyrical subjects:...

, Yyrkoon
Yyrkoon (band)
Yyrkoon is a French death metal band. The main lyrical themes revolve around occultism, horror/fantasy, and members' personal philosophies. The name Yyrkoon is derived from the name of Elric of Melnibone's cousin in Michael Moorcock's fantasy series....

, Benighted
Benighted
Benighted is a brutal death metal band formed in Saint-Étienne, France, in 1998. The band comprises vocalist Julien Truchan, guitarists Liem N'Guyen and Olivier Gabriel, bassist Eric Lombard and drummer Kevin "Kikou" Foley...

, and Gojira
Gojira
Gojira is a heavy metal band formed in 1996 in Bayonne, France. The band was known as Godzilla until 2001. Gojira is composed of Joe Duplantier on vocals and guitar, his brother Mario Duplantier on drums, Christian Andreu on guitar and Jean-Michel Labadie on bass...

. Many of these bands play in the death metal
Death metal
Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal. It typically employs heavily distorted guitars, tremolo picking, deep growling vocals, blast beat drumming, minor keys or atonality, and complex song structures with multiple tempo changes....

 and/or thrash metal
Thrash metal
Thrash metal is a subgenre of heavy metal that is characterized usually by its fast tempo and aggression. Songs of the genre typically use fast percussive and low-register guitar riffs, overlaid with shredding-style lead work...

 styles. France also has a large black metal movement, including Deathspell Omega
Deathspell Omega
Deathspell Omega are a French black metal band. Their lyrical content deals primarily with Satanism on a metaphysical level – as the band has stated that "all other interpretations of Satan are intellectually invalid" – and other various theological topics...

, Blut Aus Nord
Blut Aus Nord
Blut Aus Nord is a black metal band from Mondeville, Calvados, France, which has incorporated avant-garde elements in its music.-Biography:Vindsval began a solo project, under the name "Vlad", in 1994. He released two demos before changing the project's name to Blut aus Nord, before the release of...

, Peste Noire
Peste Noire
Peste Noire is a Black metal band from Avignon, France. It was founded by La sale Famine de Valfunde in 2000. La sale Famine has been the main member and creative force behind Peste Noire since its inception, and, to date, all songs were written by La sale Famine Peste Noire is a Black metal band...

, Vorkreist
Vorkreist
Vorkreist is a French death/black metal band, based in Paris, who share members with the black metal bands Antaeus and Hell Militia. "Vorkreist" is a barbarism created by the band that supposedly means Antichrist.-Biography:...

, Arkhon Infaustus
Arkhon Infaustus
Arkhon Infaustus is a blackened death metal band from Paris, France. They formed in 1997, are signed to Osmose Productions, and have released four albums to date.-Brief History:...

, Anorexia Nervosa
Anorexia Nervosa (band)
Anorexia Nervosa is a French symphonic black metal band that started as an industrial metal act from Limoges, France. The band was formed in 1995 and was active for ten years thereafter...

 and Antaeus
Antaeus
Antaeus in Greek and Berber mythology was a half-giant, the son of Poseidon and Gaia, whose wife was Tinjis. Antaeus had a daughter named Alceis or Barce.-Mythology:...

, and the organization known as Les Légions Noires
Les Legions Noires
Les Légions Noires is a group of French underground black metal musicians and their bands, centered mostly around the city of Brest, in Britanny...

 made up of such bands as Mutiilation
Mütiilation
Mütiilation is a French one-man black metal band that was affiliated with the Black Legions. Since parting from the The Black Legions in 1996, Meyhna'ch has continued to create music under the band's name.-The Beginning and The Black Legions:...

, Vlad Tepes
Vlad Tepes (band)
Vlad Tepes was a French black metal band which was formed in Brest in 1992. The name originated from the 15th century Wallachian ruler, the inspiration for Bram Stoker's fictional vampire Dracula. The group belongs to The Black Legions. Worlok Drakksteim also has a side project named Black Murder....

 and Torgeist. The 'shoegaze' black metal movement also has many bands hailing from France, such as Alcest
Alcest
Alcest is a musical project born in Bagnols-sur-Cèze, France. It began in 2000 with three members – Neige, Aegnor and Argoth. This band released a demo of black metal songs in 2001. Shortly after, Aegnor and Argoth left the band, leaving Neige as the sole member...

, Les Discrets
Les Discrets
Les Discrets is a French post-metal band/musical project that was formed in 2003 by Fursy Teyssier as "a platform gathering music and art." The band embraces a musical style similar to that of fellow French acts like Alcest and Amesoeurs and released their first full-length album in...

 and Amesoeurs
Amesoeurs
Amesoeurs was a French post-punk/black metal band formed in Bagnols-sur-Cèze, France in Summer 2004 by guitarist/vocalist Neige of Alcest fame, and by bassist/singer Audrey Sylvain and guitarist Fursy Teyssier with the purpose of creating a music that reflects the dark side of the industrial era...

.

French House

French house
French house
French house is a catch-all term for house music by many French artists, a popular strand of the late 1990s and 2000s European dance music scene and a form of Euro disco. The genre has also been referred to as "neu-disco" , "French touch", "filter house" and "tekfunk" over the years...

 is a late 1990s form of house music
House music
House music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, United States in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago circa 1984, then in other...

, part of the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century European dance music scene and the latest form of Euro disco
Euro disco
Euro disco is an all encompassing colloquial term used to describe a variety of European electronic dance music that first originated from disco in the 1970s; incorporating elements of pop, New Wave and rock into disco-like continuous dance atmosphere...

. The genre is also known as "Disco house", "Neu-disco" (new disco), "French touch", "filter house" or "tekfunk". The early mid/late 1990s productions was notable for the "filter effect" used by artists such as Daft Punk
Daft Punk
Daft Punk are an electronic music duo consisting of French musicians Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter . Daft Punk reached significant popularity in the late 1990s house movement in France and met with continued success in the years following, combining elements of house with synthpop...

. Other productions use more mainstream vocals and samples.
French house is greatly influenced by the 1970s Euro disco
Euro disco
Euro disco is an all encompassing colloquial term used to describe a variety of European electronic dance music that first originated from disco in the 1970s; incorporating elements of pop, New Wave and rock into disco-like continuous dance atmosphere...

 and especially the short lived space disco
Space disco
Space disco is a term used to describe the fusion of disco music with futuristic themes, sounds and visuals, which was popular in the late 1970s...

 music style (a European (mostly French) variation of Hi-NRG
Hi-NRG
Hi-NRG describes a form of high-tempo disco music as well as a genre of electronic dance music originating in the United States during the late 1970s...

 disco), and also by P-Funk
P-Funk
P-Funk is a shorthand term for the repertoire and performers associated with George Clinton and the Parliament-Funkadelic collective and the distinctive style of funk music they performed...

 and the productions of Thomas Bangalter
Thomas Bangalter
Thomas Bangalter is a French electronic musician best known as a member of the French house music duo Daft Punk. He has also recorded and released music as a member of the trio Stardust, the duo Together, and as a solo artist including compositions for the film Irréversible.Thomas Bangalter owns a...



The first French house experiments (at the time called "disco house" and "neu disco") became notable in the international market between 1997 and 1999. Daft Punk
Daft Punk
Daft Punk are an electronic music duo consisting of French musicians Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter . Daft Punk reached significant popularity in the late 1990s house movement in France and met with continued success in the years following, combining elements of house with synthpop...

, Stardust
Stardust (band)
Stardust was a one-time musical collaborative effort consisting of producers Thomas Bangalter, Alan Braxe, and vocalist Benjamin Diamond.-History:The project released the popular club track titled "Music Sounds Better with You" in 1998...

 and Cassius
Cassius (band)
Cassius is a French house music duo, consisting of producers Philippe Cerboneschi and Hubert Blanc-Francart, better known as Philippe Zdar and Boom Bass.-History:...

 were the first international successful artists of the genre and their videos show their "space disco" roots.

The mass international commercial success of the genre started in 2000 because of artists like Bob Sinclar
Bob Sinclar
Bob Sinclar, originally spelled "Sinclair" - , is a French record producer, House music DJ, remixer and owner of the label Yellow Productions.- Career history :...

, Etienne de Crécy
Etienne de Crecy
Étienne Bernard Marie de Crécy is a French DJ and producer who composes house and electronic music.-Biography:...

 and Modjo
Modjo
Modjo was a French house/pop musical duo made up of producer Romain Tranchart and vocalist Yann Destagnol . It had major success with its hit single "Lady ".-Biography:...

. Galleon
Galleon (band)
Galleon is French electro-pop duo from Marseille, founded by Gilles Fahy and Phillippe Laurent.They emerged on the European dance scene in 2001 with a hit single "So I Begin" sung in English...

 followed the next year.

Today most French house bands and artists have moved on to other music styles, notably a French variation of electro, that is danced on the milky way/Tecktonik style.

Hip-Hop

Hip hop music
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...

 came from New York City, invented in the 1970s by African Americans. By 1983, the genre had spread to much of the world, including France. Almost immediately, French performers (musicians and breakdancers) began their career, including Max-Laure Bourjolly  and Traction Avant. Popularity was brief, however, and hip hop quickly receded to the French underground. Hip-hop was adapted to French context, especially the poverty and violence of large cities known as banlieues ("suburbs") where many French of foreign descent live, especially from the former colonial countries (West Africa and Maghreb, Caribbean). If there is some influence of African musics and of course American hip hop, French hip-hop is also strongly connected to French music, with strong reciprocal influences, from French pop and chanson, both in music and lyrics.

Paname City Rappin (1984, by Dee Nasty
Dee Nasty
Dee Nasty is a DJ, producer, and Hip-Hop pioneer in Paris, France. Dee Nasty, the Parisian father of Hip Hop, is one of Radio Nova’s original DJs. Dee Nasty is best known for producing France’s first Hip Hop record.- Career :...

) was the first album released, and the first major stars were IAM
IAM (band)
IAM is a French hip hop band from Marseille, created in 1989, and composed of Akhenaton , Shurik'n , Khéops , Imhotep , and Kephren . 'IAM' has several meanings, including 'Invasion Arrivée de Mars'...

, Suprême NTM
Suprême NTM
Suprême NTM is a French hip hop group formed in 1989 in the Seine-Saint-Denis département. The group comprises rappers Joey Starr and Kool Shen...

 and MC Solaar
MC Solaar
MC Solaar is a francophone hip hop and rap artist. He is one of the most internationally popular and influential French rappers....

, whose 1991 Qui Sème le Vent Récolte le Tempo
Qui sème le vent récolte le tempo
Qui sème le vent récolte le tempo is French rapper MC Solaar's first album. The title is a pun on the French version of the Biblical proverb "qui sème le vent récolte la tempête" . The song samples Lou Donaldson's One Cylinder...

, was a major hit. Through the nineties, the music grew to become one of the most popular genres in France with huge success of the pioneers (IAM, Suprême NTM) and newcomers (Ministère Amer
Ministère AMER
The Ministère AMER is a French hip hop group from Sarcelles, consisting of the rappers Passi and Stomy Bugsy , DJ Ghetch, and the producer/manager Kenzy. The group is also associated with other major French hip hop artists such as Doc Gyneco and Hamed Daye...

, Oxmo Puccino
Oxmo Puccino
Oxmo Puccino is a French hip hop musician.- Life :Puccino was born in 1974 in Ségou, Mali. He came to Paris one year later, and lived in the XIXe arrondissement from the age of 5. He is the brother of basketball player Mamoutou Diarra...

, Lunatic
Lunatic
"Lunatic" is a commonly used term for a person who is mentally ill, dangerous, foolish, unpredictable; a condition once called lunacy. The word derives from lunaticus meaning "of the moon" or "moonstruck".-Lunar hypothesis:...

). France is the world's second-largest hip-hop market. The most popular rappers of the 2000's are Diam's
Diam's
Diam's is a French-language rap artist of French and Greek Cypriot origin. Her family moved to Essonne in 1984....

, Booba
Booba
Elie Yaffa better known under his stage name Booba, is a French rapper from Paris. He is half Senegalese from his father's side and half French of Moroccan origin from his mother's side...

 and Kenza Farah
Kenza Farah
Kenza Farah is an Algerian R&B singer. She is considered the second internet success story in the French music industry, after Yelle...

 with successful artists more underground like La Rumeur
La Rumeur
La Rumeur is a french-language rap group from Élancourt ). Founded in 1997, the group is composed of four rappers, Ekoué, Hamé, Mourad, and Philippe, and two DJs, Kool M and Soul G....

, la Caution and TTC
TTC (band)
TTC is a four member hip hop and electronic band from Paris, France. It is composed of MCs Tido Berman, Teki Latex and Cuizinier plus DJ Orgasmic. They were signed to Big Dada for their first LP Ceci N'est Pas Un Disque, the title of which referred to René Magritte's painting La trahison des...

.

Raï

France has long had a large Algerian minority, a legacy of colonial domination of that country.

Beginning in the 1920s raï
Raï
Raï is a form of folk music that originated in Oran, Algeria from Bedouin shepherds, mixed with Spanish, French, African and Arabic musical forms, which dates back to the 1930s....

 developed in Algeria as a combination of rural and urban music. Often viewed as a form of resistance towards censorship, many of the conventional values of the old raï became modernized with instruments, synthesizers and modern equipment. Later performers added influences from funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...

, hip hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...

, rock
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

 and other styles, creating most notably a pop genre called lover's raï. Performers include Rachid Taha
Rachid Taha
Rachid Taha is an Algerian singer and activist based in France who has been described as "sonically adventurous." His music is influenced by many different styles such as rock, electronic, punk and raï.-Early life:Taha was born in 1958 in Sig , Algeria, although a second source suggests he was...

 and Faudel
Faudel
Faudel , born Faudel Belloua on June 6, 1978 in Mantes-la-Jolie, is a French singer of Algerian descent.-Early years:...

. This time was when the music started getting popular among the Maghrebi populace of France. Originating in the lower-class slums of the city of Oran
Oran
Oran is a major city on the northwestern Mediterranean coast of Algeria, and the second largest city of the country.It is the capital of the Oran Province . The city has a population of 759,645 , while the metropolitan area has a population of approximately 1,500,000, making it the second largest...

, raï shot to the top of the French charts in 1992 with the release of Khaled
Khaled (musician)
Khaled Hadj Ibrahim , better known as Khaled, is a raï singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist born in Sidi El Houari in Oran Province of Algeria...

's self-titled album Khaled
Khaled (album)
Khaled, released in 1992, is Khaled's self titled album, which established his reputation as a star in France. The album was produced by Michael Brook and Don Was....

. Rai continues to be an identity marker, and aided with the creation of the Arab identity in France. Social and economic problems continue in the banlieus of France, and thus, the verlan slang music will continue.

Raï as a musical form has tonal differences that go up and down, and has adopted beats that sound like pop. Much of the music is sung in Arabic, and differ depending on the country where it has immigrated. In France, a majority of raï music is a mixture of Arabic and verlan
Verlan
Verlan is an argot in the French language, featuring inversion of syllables in a word, and is common in slang and youth language. It rests on a long French tradition of transposing syllables of individual words to create slang words...

French.

External links

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