Nightclubbing: Montréal’s Lime Light

Nightclubbing: Montréal’s Lime Light

How the Lime Light and its innovative DJ Robert Ouimet made history.

In the early 1970s, Montréal was a city in flux. The ’60s brought the Quiet Revolution, a dramatic shift in Quebec’s control of its own economic and cultural fortunes that led to extensive empowerment of the province’s French-Canadian population. Expo 67 showed the world that Montréal was more than just the city of excess and vice. The October Crisis of 1970, in which the separatist group Front de libération du Québec kidnapped and murdered a provincial cabinet minister, led Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to invoke martial law in the province using the War Measures Act, a move that bolstered the Quebec sovereignty movement and raised English-French tensions across the country.

more about the limelight HERE

Québec Électrique : Montréal Discoville

A celebration of the heyday of Montréal disco at the opulent Théâtre Paradoxe, featuring local disco legends Robert Ouimet, Michel Simard and LOST HEROES, as well as italo legend Alexander Robotnick and Québec’s own France Joli.

Aujourd’hui, il est peut-être difficile de croire que Montréal portait autrefois le titre de deuxième ville du disco. Mais les DJ, labels et clubs en pleine effervescence à la fin des années 70 le savent très bien : le disco y était la trame sonore par excellence, tant en français qu’en anglais. Afin de célébrer l’immense impact qu'a eu le mythique club Lime Light à Montréal, la Red Bull Music Academy réunira Robert Ouimet, Michel Simard et LOST HEROES -trois des DJ les plus influents de la ville à cette époque- qui seront rejoints pour l'occasion par la diva disco France Joli et l'italien Alexander Robotnick dont les productions mettaient de l'avant les sonorités synthétiques de l'italo disco, genre fort prisé à Montréal durant cette période. Organisée au chic Théâtre Paradoxe, la soirée remettra le disco de Montréal sur la carte – pour le plaisir de ceux qui se souviennent de la belle époque, mais aussi pour celui des néophytes.
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Montréal’s status as disco’s second city may be an unlikely one, but the DJs, record labels and clubs that sprouted up back in the late ’70s know the truth: The genre was the soundtrack to the city, in both French and English. In a special celebration of the vaunted Lime Light club’s enormous influence on the city, local disco royalty Robert Ouimet, Michel Simard and LOST HEROES – three DJs with almost a century’s worth of experience among them – will play alongside disco diva France Joli and special European guest Alexander Robotnick, whose productions showcase the heavily synthesized italo sounds that flavored Montréal disco at the time. Held at the opulent Théâtre Paradoxe, it will be a night that puts Montréal disco back on the map for those who knew about it way back when, and those who are finding out about it for the very first time.



Robert Ouimet – 1972
Michel Simard – 1976
LOST HEROES – 1979
Alexander Robotnick
France Joli

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about RED BULL MUSIC ACADEMY 

The Red Bull Music Academy is a global music institution committed to fostering creativity in music. We celebrate music, its culture, and the transformative minds behind it. Begun in 1998, the Academy has taken the core principles that underlie its annual workshop for selected participants and applied this curatorial approach to events, lectures, and city-wide festivals throughout the year.