Public Funding of Popular Music

Abstract

The extension of state funding to art forms previously considered undeserving of subsidy has frequently been characterized as the most original and innovative accomplishment of Jack Lang’s tenure as Minister of Culture¹. From 1981 onwards, the Minister’s public statements suggested an unprecedented willingness to accept ‘popular’ culture as equivalent to an established canon of ‘high’ culture: ‘Everyone can make their choice: academic art or popular art, contemporary art or traditional art,’ Lang thus declared in November 1981.² The new doctrine — variously denounced by Lang’s detractors as heralding a dangerous cultural ‘relativism’ or as designed to consolidate the Minister’s opinion poll ratings — was quickly translated into new funding schemes aimed explicitly at previously ‘excluded’ forms of expression, both ‘traditional,’ as in the case of ‘circus arts’ or chanson, and more contemporary, as in the case of rock music or strip cartoons.³