President Emmanuel Macron Supports Recognition of French House Music as Cultural Heritage

If Daft Punk’s helmets ever end up under museum glass beside a Monet painting, you’ll know Emmanuel Macron's cultural campaign has hit its mark.

The French President has announced his intentions to nominate French touch, the influential sub-genre of house music born in 1990s Paris, for recognition on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list.

Speaking on the French station Radio FG during the recent Fête de la Musique festival, Macron praised the genre's international influence and called for its formal preservation. He cited Germany’s similar move in 2023 to place Berlin techno on its national intangible cultural heritage registry as precedent. 

"We are inventors of electro. We have that French Touch," Macron said, per The Telegraph.

Roughly a decade after Berlin’s rise, French touch found its pulse in the hands of artists like Daft Punk, whose filtered disco and vocoded magic forever redefined electronic music culture. Since that time, France has produced several iconic figures of the broader movement including Justice, David Guetta, Bob Sinclar and Lauren Garnier.

Macron's call to preserve French house as cultural heritage reads as part of a broader defense of human creativity, arriving at a moment when the global music industry is grappling with the impact of artificial intelligence. "AI mustn't replace human intelligence," he warned during the interview, adding that it "mustn't trivialize creativity."