ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes French academic knowledge dealing with musical genres falling under the category of 'amplified music'. The discipline which strongly dominates French research into amplified music is sociology. Sociology is strongly represented in research into rock, techno and rap, but political science, history, philosophy and musicology also heavily focus on these musical families. Meso-level analysis is currently the approach most frequently undertaken by French researchers. The chapter considers rock as a generic category of the musical world. Punk and metal are the two musical genres most widely covered by French researchers. Comparison of the three musical families dealt with in this article demonstrates both similarities and differences in their treatment by academic research in France. The first striking similarity is that French cultural history of these musical genres is almost non-existent. The second commonality is the lack of differentiation of musical genres within their original families.
