Paris, The Center of World Music

Music in France is thriving, and Paris is in the center of it. If you turn on the radio in Paris you will hear some top forty songs, like Lady Gaga or Jay Z, and some cheesy French pop. But go outside and you wont hear that homogenized pop culture. You WILL hear music from Mali, North Africa, the Middle East, Spain, Sweden…you’ll hear the world!

Free Live Music

Because the mayor of Paris and the ministry of culture in France finance free concerts (spending around €12.6 billion a year on the arts and culture), live music is readily available there, and the locals take advantage of it. In the 19th arrondissement the first urban park of Paris, Le Parc de la Villette offers free live music every Sunday in the summer and other events throughout the year. Musical entertainment here is not just for the youth of France; it’s a family affair.

On a Sunday in July families, friends, young couples and old couples picnic while watching Vieux Farka Touré of Mali. They dance to the reggae music of Ray Lema from Congo.

Paris as a center of world music

So are the French so passionate and open to music because they’re government promotes it? Or does the state spend so much money on culture because its population is so passionately artistic? One thing is for certain– a population of 5.7 million immigrants in makes Paris a center of creativity and attracts artists from all over the world.

Sources: L’institute National de la statistique er des études économiques www.insee.fr

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