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French Music*
Whether jazz, rock or classical, sounds emerge from clubs, hotels, theaters, churches or concert hall over the capital. Maintaining its pivotal role as the European jazz center, Paris has attracted a stream of top American musicians since Sydney Bechet's days. Jazz clubs abound; traditionalists vie with experimentalists; Miles Davis would appear for a lightning set; and local musicians create their own syntheses.
Rock music, on the other hand, remains the black sheep of French culture - despite desperate state support. Exceptions such as the Gypsy Kings or Les Negresses Vertes bend the rule, but ultimately creative rock escapes the French character and language, possibly too analytical for such basic rhythms.
The recent explosion of "world music" has given black Africans and North Africans (mainly Algerian) a chance to express new sounds, amalgamations of native harmonies with the westernized arrangements.
Opera and classical music are centralized fields in France: 75 % of French composers over 40 studies at the Paris Conservatoire and the sophisticated new conservatoire at La Vilette will no doubt maintain his status quo. Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux, Edgar Varèse and the Greek-born Iannis Xenakis, with Olivier Messïaen (who died in 1992) as a strong background influence, are France's contemporary masters who, although sometimes open to electro-acoustic innovation, avoid minimalist American models.
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