Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains the French touring phenomenon of Age Tendre, la Tournee, and utilizes it as a platform from which to discuss the implications for approaching aging within the context of competing French identities. It argues questions about inclusion and exclusion, about heteronormative whiteness and how those have implications for ideals of aging within a contemporary France that is beset with internal debates over identity, nation and what role those have in its future. The book focuses on the conceit of ‘travelling’, whereby music is at once rooted, or ‘grounded’ and ‘de-territorialized’, since it travels not only across differing spaces but across time. It discusses the notion of music as shared and inherited, tying this idea to the newly conceived idea of a European identity that emerged post Second World War.