Montreal clubs across the city are retooling their music systems as DJs become increasingly unpopular attractions. “No one wants to listen to DJs anymore,” says club owner Thierry Goodwall. “An increasing number of patrons are refusing to attend venues that don’t have harpists playing the latest hits. It’s a very strange trend, a complete upending of the status quo. The party scene is undergoing a seismic shift right now.”

The booming popularity of harp music has caught most night life commentators off guard. “Ten years ago, who would have predicted that teenagers and young adults would now rather listen to harpists play Gluck’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits instead of DJs blasting out EDM?” says columnist Richard Couille. “Something enormous is happening right now at a cultural level. Our society is going back to its roots, rejecting the crass materialism of Hollywood for traditional music that’s part of the Western cannon.”

Teenagers agree. “The cool thing used to be hating Western civilization,” says 17 year old John Winston. “My older sister went to Concordia University, where they taught her to hate herself and her culture. That’s what used to be cool. The losers who write for shit like Vice or Gawker still think hating the West is in. It’s not. That’s why their circulation numbers are plummeting. That’s why their sites are failing. At some point, 35 year old assholes with culture studies degrees will realize that they’re not cool anymore, that their politics are old people politics, that their cultural values are passé. Young people today would rather listen to harp music while reading Dante’s Inferno and discussing the merits of the Western Cannon than reading yet another listicle about how racist white people . We look at all these old feminists who are fast approaching middle age and we laugh at them. They’re tacky as fuck. They’re like throw backs to the 90s who wear hammer pants unironically. They still think they’re 22 years old and that they’ve got the pulse of the current generation. It’s just sad.”

Richard agrees and says that the recent teenage love affair with harp music is only one part of a much larger trend. “In recent years, popular fashion has largely been shaped by nostalgia for decades past,” says Richard. “In the years ahead, I expect popular fashion to be shaped by a rekindled interest in older cultural traditions that angry self-hating University graduates have tried to erase. Teenagers are turning their backs on post-modern pop culture. Hating Western civilization is out. Loving it is in.”