The crowd did not want to miss a minute of the arrival of the Techno Parade! The annual procession, which had paraded through the streets of Paris for several hours before reaching its final destination at Bastille, was the biggest and greenest to date. This year, dancers, DJs and all float participants had signed up to a new ecological charter proposed by the parade organisers Technopol urging everyone to respect the environment by sorting their rubbish and limiting noise pollution.

The floats participating in the Techno Parade 2007 all agreed to respect this year’s new ‘sound code’, turning off their sound systems after an initial lap of honour around Place de la Bastille. Technopol’s director, Sophie Bernard, claims that the overall result of this year’s parade was very positive indeed. “The Techno Parade 2007 beat all previous records”, she says, “Attendance levels topped 500,000* and we managed to attract young people from right across the social spectrum. The highlight of the tenth Techno Parade was the fact that young people involved really appropriated the event. We tried to get them all sorting their rubbish into different bins and, according to the City of Paris Cleaning Services, this really worked. So there was a definite raising of environmental awareness there… Dance fans can no longer be dismissed as being selfish and thoughtless!”

The Techno Parade 2007 was followed by the usual army of rubbish trucks and green-clad road-sweepers clearing up the mess. But this year’s fall-out appeared to be limited - an impressive feat given that the parade, essentially a giant itinerant dancefloor, attracted a record turn-out. Groups of street clubbers turned up from all over the world, a crowd of particularly enthusiastic Anglo-Saxon and Asian fans going wild around the Technopol float as David Guetta played his international club smash Love Is Gone. “France is lucky to have DJs like David Guetta and Joachim Garraud who are very respected on the international scene,” says Bernard, “And we were very lucky that Garraud, one of France’s most successful music exports, agreed to be the official patron of this year’s event.”

The Techno Parade 2007 was followed by a host of events organised across the city in nightclubs as well as concert venues usually reserved for rock bands. Techno groups and DJs got to play at venues such as Le Cabaret Sauvage, Le Trabendo and even Le Zénith where Justice and Martin Solveig, two of the most happening French electro acts on the current international scene, brought the house down.

David Glaser

Translation : Julie Street

*the Préfecture de police estimated a much lower level of attendance