Article Contributed by Falcon Publicity
Published on December 22, 2025
France has officially added electronic music to its national Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage, marking a decisive step toward a future UNESCO application. The announcement, reported by Le Figaro, highlights nearly a century of electronic innovation, from the 1928 Ondes Martenot to the global impact of the French Touch with the likes of Air, Cassius, Daft Punk, and Justice; citing Jean-Michel Jarre as one of the movement’s foundational figures.
Electronic music is now acknowledged as a living cultural practice shaping France’s artistic identity. Jarre’s groundbreaking 1976 album Oxygène helped propel the genre onto the world stage, and his decades-long role as a UNESCO Ambassador has seen him a leading advocate for the recognition of intangible culture. On November 1, he performed a large-scale concert at Registan Square in Samarkand during UNESCO’s 43rd General Conference.
Reacting to the inscription, Jarre said: “I’m glad to see that electronic music is finally taking its place within world heritage, especially after more than three decades of commitment as a UNESCO Ambassador and spokesperson for intangible culture.”
France has officially added electronic music to its national Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage, marking a decisive step toward a future UNESCO application. The announcement, reported by Le Figaro, highlights nearly a century of electronic innovation, from the 1928 Ondes Martenot to the global impact of the French Touch with the likes of Air, Cassius, Daft Punk, and Justice; citing Jean-Michel Jarre as one of the movement’s foundational figures.
Electronic music is now acknowledged as a living cultural practice shaping France’s artistic identity. Jarre’s groundbreaking 1976 album Oxygène helped propel the genre onto the world stage, and his decades-long role as a UNESCO Ambassador has seen him a leading advocate for the recognition of intangible culture. On November 1, he performed a large-scale concert at Registan Square in Samarkand during UNESCO’s 43rd General Conference.
Reacting to the inscription, Jarre said: “I’m glad to see that electronic music is finally taking its place within world heritage, especially after more than three decades of commitment as a UNESCO Ambassador and spokesperson for intangible culture.”
The recognition underscores the genre’s enduring artistic, social and historical significance. Over five decades, Jarre has continually expanded the possibilities of electronic sound and large-scale performance, staging landmark concerts at iconic cultural and UNESCO World Heritage sites including the Pyramids of Giza, the Forbidden City, the Eiffel Tower, Versailles, Masada, Pompeii and, most recently, Samarkand.
WATCH: Jean-Michel Jarre live in Sevilla
About Jean-Michel Jarre:
Jean-Michel Jarre has always been a futurist in his field. Throughout his illustrious career, the composer, performer, producer, and cultural ambassador has continued to break new ground with his music and his mastery of creative innovation. From his early pioneering role in electronic music, his use of multi-channel audio technology and production, to his recent explorations into the realms of VR performance and the metaverse, technology is at the forefront of everything he does. He is quoted as claiming that “today is the most exciting time to create, to make music, and to share across so many mediums.”
Jarre is a UNESCO ambassador for education, science and culture, an unconditional defender of the planet and the environment and Laureate of the Stephen Hawking Medal for scientific communication.
Jarre’s current catalog, which now includes 22 studio albums, has generated sales of more than 85 million worldwide to date, and earned him countless awards and nominations. Throughout his career, Jarre has taken as canvas, some of the most iconic landmarks and UNESCO World Heritage sites around the globe for his creative, cultural, and environmental message. He has also set new Guinness World Records for live audience attendance at concerts in several emblematic locations. He was the first western musician to be invited to perform in China and has also created and performed concert-events at the Great Pyramids in Egypt, the Sahara Desert, the Forbidden City & Tiananmen Square, the Eiffel Tower, the Dead Sea, Al Ula and more. He has consistently sold-out arena and stadium tours across the continents, as well as performing at major festivals including Coachella. In 2021, he rang in the new year with Welcome To The Other Side, a groundbreaking livestream broadcast worldwide from a virtual Notre Dame in Paris. Entertainment trade publication US Pollstar states that the livestream attracted record breaking audiences of over 75 million viewers worldwide across various platforms, television channels and VR. On 25th December 2023, Jarre performed Versailles 400: a unique hybrid artistic creation conceived specifically to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Château de Versailles and performed in real life live from the Hall of Mirrors and in virtual reality. In May 2024, he performed a unique one-off concert-event ‘Bridge From The Future’, in Bratislava, Slovakia with special guest Sir Brian May to over 100,000 people in Bratislava, Slovakia, marking the opening of the seventh edition of Starmus Festival. In September 2024, he headlined the closing ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. In Summer 2025 he played a series of live shows across Europe in iconic locations including Piazza San Marco in Venice and Anfiteatro Degli Scavi in Pompeii. He recently released Live in Bratislava, the definitive audio-visual record of his historic open-air concert-event ‘Bridge From The Future.’
