Universal Music France

Despite its Afro-American origins, the history of disco music, the soundtrack of the seventies, would be inconceivable without a handful of legendary European music producers who conjured up some of the biggest world-wide hits in the anonymity of their studios.

By the end of the seventies, disco music, considered too mainstream, was dead. But DJs and dance floors still needed new records and faster rhythms. Built on synthesizer sounds, the hi-nrg (high energy) style swept the gay clubs before hitting the charts during the eighties.

Legendary Paris rock venue, the Bataclan, has reopened with an emotional gig by the British singer Sting, a year after jihadi gunmen burst in and killed 90 people during a series of terrorist attacks in the French capital. The former Police frontman, 65, appeared on stage to cheers as hundreds of concert-goers including families of the victims and survivors, crowded together struggling to comprehend how gunmen could have burst into the venue – now completely refurbished to cover up its lasting scars, including a new stage and red velvet curtains – and opened fire on music fans in one of the most brutal attacks on French soil since the second world war.

A recorded concert from Mika's latest tour: Apocalypse Calypso in Paris.