Popular Music in France from Chanson to Techno: Culture, Identity and Society

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Contents: Foreword
Preface: Music, modernization and popular identity, R. Middleton
The study of popular music between sociology and aesthetics - a survey of current research in France, P. Leguern
In form the margins: chanson, pop and cultural legitimacy, D. Looseley
The French music industry: structures, challenges and responses, H. Dauncey
Popular music on French radio and television, G. Hare
The popular music press, M. Pires
The disintegration of community: popular music in French cinema 1945, P. Powrie
Le Demy-monde: the bewitched, betwixt and between French musical, R. Stilwell
Chanson engagee and political activism in the 1950s and 1960s: Leo Ferre and Georges Brassens, C. Tinker
Divided loyalties: singing in the Occupation, C. Lloyd
Rock and culture in France: ways, processes and conditions of integration, P. Teillet
Globalization, Americanization and hip hop in France, S. Cannon
Flaubert's sparrow or the Bovary of Belleville? Edith Piaf as cultural icon, K. Reader
French electronic music: the invention of a tradition, P. Birgy
Conclusion: French popular music, cultural exception and globalization, H. Dauncey and S. Cannon
Annex
Bibliography.

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In France during the 1960s and 1970s, popular music became a key component of socio-cultural modernisation as the music/record industry became increasingly important in both economic and cultural terms in response to demographic changes and the rise of the modern media. As France began questioning traditional ways of understanding politics and culture before and after May 1968, music as popular culture became an integral part of burgeoning media activity. Press, radio and television developed free from de Gaulle's state domination of information, and political activism shifted its concerns to the use of regional languages and regional cultures, including the safeguard of traditional popular music against the centralising tendencies of the Republican state. The cultural and political significance of French music was again revealed in the 1990s, as French-language music became a highly visible example of France's quest to maintain her cultural 'exceptionalism' in the face of the perceived globalising hegemony of English and US business and cultural imperialism. Laws were passed instituting minimum quotas of French-language music. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed developing issues raised by new technologies, as compact discs, the minitel telematics system, the internet and other innovations in radio and television broadcasting posed new challenges to musicians and the music industry. These trends and developments are the subject of this volume of essays by leading scholars across a range of disciplines including French studies, musicology, cultural and media studies and film studies. It constitutes the first attempt to provide a complete and up-to-date overview of the place of popular music in modern France and the reception of French popular music abroad.

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