Grammy Awards Part 2
Welcome back! Today I wanted to continue my discussion about the Grammy awards. Now I know that the first post was bit on the longer side, and I am going to try and keep today's thoughts a bit shorter.
I have to admit, I am very happy to see that the Grammy nominees this year were way more diverse than we are used to seeing. And I applaud the Academy for including more artists of colors and language across the board. And speaking of the Academy, I wanted to talk a little bit about them and how the Grammy process works.
The voters involved are a select group of songwriters, conductors, recording artists, sound engineers, etc. All of these people operate in professionally within the music industry, across genres and careers. So that being said, the voting environment for the Grammys is more along the lines of professionalism rather than cultural. This makes things a bit more interesting though because we don't have unanimous view on what "quality" is. In a way I think this is spectacular, because the voters can choose which music they find to be of higher quality, without having to justify why they chose what they chose. But therein may lie the problem. Because these voters don't have to justify their choices, we don't always get to see the big picture.
There is a general rule which states that experts in a specific genre are not allowed to vote for awards regarding that genre. If a voter is highly educated in a specific category, they can't vote. Which does not make sense to me at all. It seems a bit of a waste to me. If someone is educated and knowledgable about a subject, they should be allowed to speak their mind and contribute their own opinion. It leaves the voting to uninformed and relatively uneducated decisions. The voting is left to open guessing at this point, and it is no wonder that the more popular the track, the more votes it will get. Let's say for example, a classical artists must vote for a hip hop category. The artist is more likely to vote for the track or aritst they have heard the most of or the most about, whether on the radio or elsewhere. This idea of "non uniformity" gets lost becasue only that which is widely heard and recognized, gets voted for. Popularity and media success come to the forefront of these decisions, diminishing the chances of truly incredible artists to have their brilliance recognized.
As music changes and what we dseire to hear changes, it is important for the National Academy to acclimate quickly. It isn't enough to include a genre after it has been around for 10 years. It isn't enough for educated voters to be left out of the selection process. The National Academy, will hopefully tackle these issues within their own system. And thankfully, these issues are easy to fix! I promised I wouldn't go overboard with this post, but I am very interseted to discuss with the rest of you! I leave you all with some work by Grammy nominated artists I have come to really love. I hope you all enjoy and please feel free to comment!
I have to admit, I am very happy to see that the Grammy nominees this year were way more diverse than we are used to seeing. And I applaud the Academy for including more artists of colors and language across the board. And speaking of the Academy, I wanted to talk a little bit about them and how the Grammy process works.
The voters involved are a select group of songwriters, conductors, recording artists, sound engineers, etc. All of these people operate in professionally within the music industry, across genres and careers. So that being said, the voting environment for the Grammys is more along the lines of professionalism rather than cultural. This makes things a bit more interesting though because we don't have unanimous view on what "quality" is. In a way I think this is spectacular, because the voters can choose which music they find to be of higher quality, without having to justify why they chose what they chose. But therein may lie the problem. Because these voters don't have to justify their choices, we don't always get to see the big picture.
There is a general rule which states that experts in a specific genre are not allowed to vote for awards regarding that genre. If a voter is highly educated in a specific category, they can't vote. Which does not make sense to me at all. It seems a bit of a waste to me. If someone is educated and knowledgable about a subject, they should be allowed to speak their mind and contribute their own opinion. It leaves the voting to uninformed and relatively uneducated decisions. The voting is left to open guessing at this point, and it is no wonder that the more popular the track, the more votes it will get. Let's say for example, a classical artists must vote for a hip hop category. The artist is more likely to vote for the track or aritst they have heard the most of or the most about, whether on the radio or elsewhere. This idea of "non uniformity" gets lost becasue only that which is widely heard and recognized, gets voted for. Popularity and media success come to the forefront of these decisions, diminishing the chances of truly incredible artists to have their brilliance recognized.
As music changes and what we dseire to hear changes, it is important for the National Academy to acclimate quickly. It isn't enough to include a genre after it has been around for 10 years. It isn't enough for educated voters to be left out of the selection process. The National Academy, will hopefully tackle these issues within their own system. And thankfully, these issues are easy to fix! I promised I wouldn't go overboard with this post, but I am very interseted to discuss with the rest of you! I leave you all with some work by Grammy nominated artists I have come to really love. I hope you all enjoy and please feel free to comment!
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