A Personal Note

Music, more than any other art, creates immediate emotional connections across time and space. When we hear the soaring lines of a medieval chant, the intimate confession of a chanson, or the collective ecstasy of an electronic drop, we're not just perceiving sound waves—we're communing with other humans across centuries and cultures.

French music offers particularly rich opportunities for such communion because it's been so carefully preserved, documented, and continued. The infrastructure described in this book's final chapter—the venues, schools, media, and support systems—exists because generations of French people believed music mattered enough to invest in its future.