The best contemporary popular music in France is distinctly un-French, combining sounds from West, Central and North Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, though the old chanson tradition is undergoing something of a revival, and rap has taken strides. Meanwhile jazz and classical music continues to thrive. The French have treated film as an art form, deserving of state subsidy, ever since its origination with the Lumière brothers in 1895, although today the greatest economic drive for French film comes from the pay television network Canal Plus. In theatre, the French have developed their own heavyweight brand of intellectual drama in which directors (not playwrights) dominate. Innovative dance can't compete with the US, but there are several excellent regional companies and festivals that bring in the best international talent

Standard French rock largely deserves its miserable 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 recent law insisting that radio stations' output must be at least forty percent French.

However, France is in the forefront of the World Music ( sono mondial ) 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 recent demise, 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. The best trance/jungle DJ is Gilb-R, while Etienne Daho , who found fame as a pop star in the 1980s, has gained another following with the trance/jungle feel of his 1998 album.

But the French are probably right not to abandon chansons , epitomized by Edith Piaf and developed by 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 Arlette Denis and Dominique A continue the tradition, while Juliette has added a postmodern flavor.

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 trade, 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 twelve companies, of which Strasbourg and Toulouse are said to be the best, and a further dozen orchestras. Monaco's opera house is renowned for drawing the top international stars. 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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