Standard French rock largely deserves its lack-lustre reputation. Sixties rocker Johnny Halliday is still France's biggest music star; Patrick Bruel, idol of love-lorn adolescents, appeals equally across the generations; and Seventies disco music, epitomized by Claude François, remains depressingly popular. This said, half of all albums bought in France are recorded by British and American bands, and the dominance of Anglo-Saxon music on the radio prompted a law in 1996 insisting that radio stations' output must be at least forty percent French.However, France is in the forefront of the World Music (musique du monde) scene. Algerian raï flourishes, with singers like Cheb Khaled and Zahouania enjoying megastar status. Daddy Yod from Guadeloupe sings ragga; Angélique Kidjo, from Benin, is a brilliant vocalist as is the Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour; and the best "alternative" rock band, until their demise in 1995, was the Franco-Spanish Mano Negra, whose music, heavily influenced by Latin American Tours, combined rap, reggae, rock and salsa sounds. The "ethnically French" have produced their own rewarding hybrids, best exemplified in the Pogue-like chaos of Les Négresses Vertes. Other names to look out for producing eclectic sounds are Louise Attaque, Mano Solo, Gabriel Yacoub and Thomas Ferson, and groups like Paris Combo, Pigalle and Castafiore Bazooka. French "country music", known as Astérix rock, with accordions as the main instruments, has a raucous energy going for it. The culture of the dispossessed suburbs has found musical expression in rap and hip-hop. France is the second biggest producer of rap music after the US, and names to look out for include the internationally known MC Solaar, NTM, IAM, Doc Gynéco and Alliance Ethnik. Electronic music has long been a French obsession, with the world-famous Jean Michel Jarre at the fore. With such a tradition, it's not surprising that house and techno are popular in France. DJs to look out for are the well-known Laurent Garnier, plus Manu le Malin, Sex Toy, DJ Cam, Chris the French Kiss and the techno twosome Daft Punk; renowned throughout clubland for their thumping mix of house, funk, techno and hip-hop they have helped radically overhaul France's naff disco image of yore. The best trance/jungle DJ is Gilb-R, while Etienne Daho, who found fame as a pop star in the 1980s, gained another following with the trance/jungle feel of his 1998 album. Around the same time, the best-selling duo Air released the dreamy Moon Safari album, a very Gallic kind of chill-out music that remains highly influential several years on. DJ Claude Challe, meanwhile, promotes a kind of world-dance music through his eclectic Bhudda Bar compilations (named after the celebrated Paris club), showcasing both French and international artists. But the French are probably right not to abandon chansons, the tradition of ultra-sophisticated, smoky songs epitomized by Edith Piaf and developed by Charles Trenet, Georges Brassens and the Belgian Jacques Brel in the Fifties and Sixties, and reaching their sly, sexy best with the legendary Serge Gainsbourg, who died in 1991. Today, the elderly Charles Aznavour and younger singer-composers like Jean-Louis Murat, Arlette Denis and Dominique A continue the tradition, while Juliette, Vincent Delerm and Benjamin Biolay – a young singer-songwriter hailed as the new Serge Gainsbourg – have added a postmodern flavour. As an indication of the fact that chansons are undergoing something of a revival, in 2002 the Québécoise Isabelle Boulay made it to number two in the French album charts with a medley of Piaf, Brel and Aznavour songs entitled Au Moment d'Être à Vous, and even Patrick Bruel entered the fray, with his surprising but very successful Entre-Deux, a reprise of 1920s and 1930s favourites. Jazz has long enjoyed an appreciative audience in France: Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and Miles Davis were being listened to in the Fifties, when elsewhere in Europe their names were known only to a tiny coterie of fans. Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt and his partner, violinist Stéphane Grappelli, whose work represents the distinctive and undisputed French contribution to the jazz canon, had much to do with the music's popularity. But it was also greatly enhanced by the presence of many front-rank black American musicians, for whom Paris was a haven of freedom and culture after the racial prejudice and philistinism of the States. Among them were the soprano sax player Sidney Bechet, who set up in legendary partnership with French clarinettist Claude Luter, and Bud Powell, whose turbulent exile partly inspired the tenor man played by Dexter Gordon (himself a veteran of the Montana club) in the film Round Midnight. In Paris you can listen to a different band every night for weeks, from trad, through bebop and free jazz, to highly contemporary experimental. And there are many excellent festivals, particularly in the south. If your taste is for classical music and its development, you're also in for a treat. Paris has two opera houses and in the provinces there are no fewer than thirteen companies, of which Strasbourg and Toulouse are said to be the best, while Monaco's opera house is renowned for drawing the top international stars. Furthermore, there are nearly thirty permanent orchestras in France. The Orchestre de Paris has an excellent reputation. The places to check out for concerts are the Maisons de la Culture (in all the larger cities), churches (where chamber music is as much performed as sacred music, often without charge), and festivals – of which there are hundreds, the most famous being at Aix in July. Contemporary and experimental computer-based work flourishes: leading exponents are Paul Mefano and Pierre Boulez, founder of the IRCAM centre in Paris and himself one of the first pupils of Olivier Messiaen, the grand old man of modern French music who died in 1992.
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