Grammy Awards

Patriotic Song of the Week

"Home On The Range"

Grammy Awards

Best New Artist

Listening Example: Dua Lipa "Be The One"

Often times, when we are learning about Musicians during Assembly, we hear they have won a Grammy Award. This week we are going to learn about the Grammy Awards and hear some music you might not have heard, from artists who won Grammy Awards this year.

Movies get Oscar awards, Musicals and Theater get Tony Awards and TV gets Emmy awards. The music community decided they needed some awards too. Thus, the Grammy awards were born in 1959.

Every year, the Grammy’s award four major awards that include all types of music. Those four general awards are record, album, song of the year, and best new artist; in total more than 75 awards are presented. The honorees receive a golden statuette of a gramophone.

This year, the winner of Record of the Year was Childish Gambino’s “This is America”, which also won Song of the year. The winner of Album of the Year was “Golden Hour” by Kacey Musgraves and Best New Artist was awarded to Dua Lipa. Today’s Listening Example is “Be the One” by Dua Lipa. She won “Best New Artist’ because the voters believed that she notably impacted the musical landscape.

Best Arrangement, Instruments & Vocals

Listening Example: Randy Waldman "Spiderman Theme"

The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences is the group that organizes the Grammy Awards. They choose the people who will vote on nominees and then different people are chosen to vote on the winners. Nominees and winners are selected from more than 25 fields, which cover such genres as pop, rock, rap, R&B, country, reggae, classical, gospel, and jazz, as well as production and postproduction work, including packaging and album notes.

On the night of the Grammy Awards show, only 10-12 of the most popular award categories are presented so that they can have lots of performances from nominees and award winners. The rest of the awards are presented at a separate ceremony held earlier in the afternoon.

Today’s Listening Example, and those we will hear the rest of the week, were presented at that separate ceremony. These artists are ones you may not have heard of before, from some music genres you never knew existed. This year, the award for “Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals” when to a man by the name of Randy Waldman who wrote his own, very impressive, version of the Spiderman Theme song. His entire album is dedicated to superhero theme songs, from Superman to the Six Million Dollar Man. All are done with a jazz flair.

Best World Music Album

Listening Example: "Umbombelo" by Soweto Gospel Choir

The Grammy Awards were first presented in Los Angeles in 1959, with only 28 total awards presented.

Winners included Ella Fitzgerald (who we learned about in Assembly last year), Frank Sinatra, and the Kingston Trio. Since that first awards ceremony, the number of categories increased because new music genres were invented. For example, Rock wasn’t a category until 1980, and rap wasn’t introduced until 1989.

Today’s Listening Example is the award winner for “Best World Music Album”. The Soweto Gospel Choir is a gospel choir from South Africa. They’ve won numerous awards around the world for their stunning vocals and dancing. Today we will hear them sing “Umbombelo” from their album “Freedom”.

Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media

Listening Example: "Black Panther" Original Soundtrack composed by Ludwig Goransson

Being nominated for a Grammy award is a big honor because it means that people have heard your music and appreciate the work you’ve done. Winning a Grammy Award is a BIG deal! Not only does it mean you are the best of the best, but it also makes people want to buy your music more, and makes you way more famous. It is not uncommon for people to win a lot of Grammy awards, sometimes in the same category year after year! In fact, Stevie Wonder has won 25 Grammy Awards and John Williams has won 24!

Today’s Listening Example is the winner for “Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media”, which means it was music written for a movie. The winner, this year, was the soundtrack to the movie, “Black Panther” written by Ludwig Goransson.