When the rave leads the revolution

On weekends, the grand quai in Old Montreal is transformed into a mega-rave. It is the culmination of the “Summit of the Night”, the gathering of all the cream of the sociology of nocturnal celebrations in North America and Europe. A techno happening, organized by Mathieu Grondin, a crazy nightlife I met during the winter in Lviv, Ukraine. He was coming back from a rave in Kherson, a city bombarded night and day by the Russian army. Eh ? A party techno under the bombs? ” Yes. The furious dance, in the midst of war, is to refuse to die,” he explained to me.

And there, in Lviv, with Mathieu, during a missile alarm, I met another surrealist character (life has its surprises): my 1992 interpreter in Georgia during the civil war. David Lezhava! What are you doing here ? He had become the night mayor of Tbilisi, a kind of Georgian counter-culture lobbyist, a link between clubbers and their government; a role that requires diplomatic dexterity of extreme finesse in this state increasingly aligned with Moscow.

THE clubbing there, it’s much more than a story of party or celebration of the marginalized. It’s a way of saying that we have opted for the Western camp, for democracy and for the world of individual freedoms.

I’m talking to you about Georgia, but it’s the same thing in Russia, Belarus or in all those European countries where social conservatism is united with the power which controls its society with an iron fist. THE clubbingit is therefore a political gesture.

In May 2018, David was arrested along with dozens of other people in Tbilisi, when police raided some tech clubs claiming to be looking for drugs and blaming these “night rakes” for the deaths of two individuals. We then closed these so-called “subversive” clubs.

In reaction, David, who had been released after 24 hours of detention, had organized, with other kings of the clubbing, a giant techno happening in front of the Georgian parliament, in the heart of the capital. They were thousands and thousands for 48 hours dancing non-stop to loud music.

Imagine replacing the big “freedom” convoy trucks that blocked all of downtown Ottawa with a rave Parliament Square for days. Big techno music. Great DJ. Even drag queens. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Every day. All night long. A happening of “freedom”!

In Georgia, where repression is a tool of power and freedom is stifled for real, libertarian Rambos and Guilda drag queens united in those hot days of May 2018 and danced together in one fight. ” Dance together. fight together was the slogan of this great social happening.

And citizens have had their government worn out. They won. And the Minister of Public Security even apologized for his excessive violence. Nightclubs have resumed their rights. We called it the techno revolution.

The clubbers took to the streets last March. The government wanted to pass a “foreign agents” bill, copied from Vladimir Putin’s modus operandi. We gave ourselves the power to shut down any organization funded more than 20% by a foreign entity. This would have resulted in the closure of newspapers, non-governmental organizations for the defense of rights, etc.

This time, again, the boxes released their consoles and their speakers. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets. They started dancing. They were protesting against the bill, but also demonstrating for Ukraine in this country whose government has never condemned the Russian invasion. People taunted the riot squads by swaying their hips and jumping over water jets from tanker trucks. They blocked the city center for days. They won again. Georgia has a political opposition on life support, but its civil society is obviously in great shape.

“We are a social movement first, not a political force. We just want to have our rights respected,” David explained to me.

So to continue my little story, this week, I meet David Lezhava again at the Phi Center in Montreal. Mathieu had invited him to the Sommet de la nuit. Knowledgeable people were discussing the benefits of conviviality at 3 a.m., the advantage of being open all night for the development of youth, the problem of liquor licenses that you never manage to obtain quite quickly, the symbolism of Burning Man, etc. We were even taught that in Berlin, nightclubs and raves have obtained a special status like museums.

I got David out of there. I took him for a double espresso at the café across the street, just to wake him up a bit. “Does it bother you too much, all these soporific discussions light years away from Tbilisi? “No, not at all, it makes me dream of the day when, at home, we can give conferences like at home to philosophize for days on night governance, on liquor licenses and end it all with a giant happening financed by the City and the government of my country. “I wish it for him too.