Music, the State and the Language

One thread has run through every chapter of this course: in France, the state has never been a bystander in music. A king granted a monopoly on opera, a revolutionary government founded a conservatoire, a national radio paid for tape experiments, a minister funded a research institute, and in the 1990s a law told radio stations how much of their output had to be in French. This final chapter pulls that thread together and asks the question the first chapter set: is French music a set of famous names, a national style or a national policy? It presents the arguments over the radio quotas and the language without taking a side. Names, dates and attributions are given from general knowledge and flagged where they should be checked.

Four Centuries of State Interest

Looking at the table, one can see a long continuity: successive French governments, of very different kinds, have treated music as a matter of public interest. That continuity is itself a French characteristic, and it is part of what the English-speaking reader may find unfamiliar.

The Ministry of Culture and the Fête de la Musique

France created a ministry devoted to culture at the end of the 1950s, with the writer André Malraux as its first minister (check the details). Over the following decades the ministry funded theatres, orchestras, museums and festivals. In the early 1980s the minister Jack Lang extended this support to popular music, and in 1982 the first Fête de la Musique was held on 21 June, a day on which anyone can play in the streets and squares and concerts are free (check the date and the founders). The festival has since spread to many other countries, and it is perhaps the most popular result of state interest in music.

The Radio Quotas

In the mid-1990s French law required radio stations to play a minimum proportion of French-language songs, a rule commonly described as 40 per cent, with a share reserved for new artists (check the figure and the details, which have been adjusted since). The aim was to protect French-language song and new French artists from being crowded out by international, mostly English-language, pop. It belongs to a wider French policy sometimes called the cultural exception, which holds that cultural goods should not be treated like other commodities in trade agreements (check). It also sits beside a law on the use of the French language passed in the same decade (check the details).

Language, Rap and the Francophone World

The rules about the French language raise a question that Chapter 9 introduced. French rap and pop use slang, verlan and borrowed words, and many artists come from families with roots outside France. A policy that protects "the French language" has to decide which French it means. Some see the current music as a vigorous living language, and others see the policy as a way to defend a standard against change. The question is open, and it is likely to remain so.

Back to the Question

Chapter 1 asked whether French music is a set of famous names, a national style or a national policy. The chapters since suggest that it is all three, and that each shaped the others. The names (Lully, Debussy, Piaf, Daft Punk) are known because institutions trained, funded or broadcast them. The style, such as the French colour of Chapter 4 or the French Touch of Chapter 8, is a claim made by critics and artists about their own tradition. And the policy, from the royal monopoly to the radio quota, is the frame that has made the other two possible.

Exercises

Course complete. For related subjects, see French Film & Television, which follows a similar path of state support and cultural argument on the screen.