Chance Meeting
Friday October 10th, 2025 with Heavy Ben
From the Library: Tele Music

Chance meeting sur percussions modernes de cosmosynthetics et contrebasses October is library month, and you know what that means on Chance Meeting. On this episode of "From the Library" we explore French label Tele Music. Tele Music is a brand of Editions Musicales Sforzando and is known for being one of the pioneers of the French music library industry. Created in 1966 by Roger Tokarz (1933-2017), just before advertising was allowed on French television (can one fathom such an era!?), it specialized from the outset in sound illustration for radio and television. This spanned genres, covering jazz, funk, electronic, ambient, rock, disco, experimental, and pop. The catalog was enriched thanks to top-notch production values and the talent of artists who were little known to the general public at the time. However, behind the scenes these composers and musicians from Tele Music contributed to over ten thousand recordings and film scores. Tele Music was rediscovered in the 1990s by musicians from the hip-hop and techno scenes. Although Tele Music tracks were originally produced for the needs of audiovisual professionals, the emergence of samplers allowed producers to use loops taken from the catalog to create other pieces. One of those was Lord Funk, who ran world famous A1 Records in downtown New York City. In the 1990s, Lord Funk acquired several music library collections. His reputation as a Frenchman of note quickly grew to the point where all the hip-hop and electro producers in the Big Apple swore by his loops and drum breaks. TELE MUSIC : 50 ANS DE LIBRARY MUSIC EN FRANCE https://gonzai.com/tele-music-50-ans-de-library-music-en-france/ (to embiggen the show icon, right-click and choose "Open image in new tab")