Voir la Liste des gagnants

"Pop music is like a national treasure, and I discovered Vincent in ’98. He has come an incredibly long way since then," said Les Éditions BYC ltée’s Bernard Caza, the publisher of one of the first artists honoured as part of the Nov. 25 Francophone SOCAN Awards presentation, Vincent Vallières. That comment set the tone for a warm and relaxed annual gathering of the cream of the Quebec music industry in downtown Montreal’s Omni Hotel.

Once again this year, the winners’ acceptance speeches were a vehicle for good cheer and humour. The evening’s capable host, France D’Amour, claimed that "musicians do their part to increase the birth rate, as people are more likely to reproduce while listening to music than after seeing their accountants." The popular singer also gave a masterful performance of a song by the 2008 winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award, François Dompierre, with composer and SOCAN board member François Cousineau at the piano. Another award winner, Mes Aïeux’s Stéphane Archambault, who accepted a Pop Music Award with his group for their popular song "Dégénérations," later quipped: “Nobody told me that they had made love while listening to our song. That will be our next challenge."

Cultural pride was a clear leitmotif among the evening’s award winners. "Many of you are expressing their gratitude to radio stations," SOCAN president Pierre-Daniel Rheault commented, "but it should really be the other way around. Their raw material is your music." René Dupéré, who received the Hagood Hardy Instrumental Music Award and whose Cirque du Soleil soundtracks are playing around the world, explained that "according to a United Nations study, it takes at least 12 million people to support a culture. Obviously, this does not apply to Quebec. But we must export our culture, and this is being done handsomely today. Long live music!" The Serbian-born composer Ana Sokolovic, who was presented with the Jan V. Matejcek Concert Music Award, paid tribute to the Quebec people for their way of making newcomers feel at home: "I’ve always felt welcome here, and I can make a living doing what I do best. In classical music, they always say that the best composers are dead. I would like that perception to change. There are lots of living composers writing excellent contemporary classical music. Thank you, SOCAN, for supporting that music."

2008 SOCAN Award winners in the film and television categories. Left to right, back row: Rudy Toussaint, Laurent Guardo, Eric Ranzenhofer and James Gelfand. Front Row: Iohann Martin, Sari Dajani, Jean-François Fabiano (SACEM) and Raymond Fabi. (Photo : Michel Gagné)

Accepting his SOCAN Classics Award for his song "Welcome soleil," an emotional Bertrand Gosselin said: "These are the nineteenth SOCAN Awards and my very first ones. I live in the back woods. But tonight I feel that we are all part of a big family. When I started writing songs, you could count the songwriters on the fingers of one-and-a-half hands. Today, that number has exploded and this makes me proud." France D’Amour had another way of expressing our music creators’ abiding love for their art: "In a world obsessed with material possessions," she said, "our true wealth is ideas. Be proud of what you do, be proud of this talent that brings warmth to a world that has become so cold."

Another theme in the evening acceptance speeches was the acknowledgement of SOCAN and of the helpfulness of its employees. K-Maro, who received the International Achievement Award with his co-writer Louis Côté, pointed out that other performing rights organizations had tried to woo them, but that he was happy and proud to be staying with SOCAN. "I’m not a number at SOCAN," he explained. The winners in the audiovisual music categories waxed particularly grateful for their SOCAN Account Executives. Raymond Fabi, who was climbing on the podium for the tenth year – and for two awards, not just one – explained that each time he talks with Lyne Lanoue, "it is a little ray of sunshine." The evening’s program was concluded by a heartfelt tribute to François Dompierre by his filmmaker friend Jacques Godbout, whose cult movie IXE-13 he has scored, followed by an acceptance speech during which Dompierre treated the audience to hilarious impressions of some of the film directors he has worked with over the years.