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Grammys Announce Initial "Americana" Nominees
The
nominees for the 49th Annual Grammy Awards were announced on
December 7 in Los Angeles. For the first time, the nominated
categories include a specific reference to "Americana."
The Best Contemporary Folk Album category has been renamed the Best
Contemporary Folk / Americana Album category. The nominees in
the newly named category are:
 Solo
Acoustic Vol. 1 - Jackson Browne
Black Cadillac - Rosanne Cash
Workbench Songs - Guy Clark
Modern Times - Bob Dylan
All The Roadrunning - Mark Knopfler & Emmylou
Harris
The
Grammy nominees provide additional evidence of the broad sweep of
Americana music. None of the albums nominated by the Grammys
were nominated for Album of the Year by the Americana Music
Association earlier this year. (Click
here for our discussion of the AMA nominees.) In fairness, two
of the Grammy nominees - Workbench Songs and Modern Times
- were released after the AMA nominees were announced.
Another
contrast with the AMA nominees is the nature of artists nominated.
Whereas the AMA nominees were dominated by maturing "country
music" artists, the Grammy nominees include a mix of maturing
country, folk and rock artists. The obvious characteristic shared by
all of the nominees is their longevity in the music business. By our
calculations, Rosanne Cash at 51 years of age is the youngest of the
Grammy nominees. Once again, we will ask the same question we
asked of the AMA nominees. Where are the "younger"
performers like Old Crow Medicine Show, Neko Case, Shawn Mullins,
BR549, etc.? All had compelling releases in 2006, but none garnered
even a mention by either the AMAs or the Grammys. It is interesting
that the editors of Amazon.com named Neko Case's Fox Confessor
Brings the Flood as the best
CD of 2006, but poor Ms. Case can't even garner a single nugget
of recognition from the Americana music
establishment.
Of
course, there in nothing wrong with the actual artists nominated.
Each nominee is fantastic in its own way. But we remain concerned
that "Americana" continues to be viewed by many as the
place where established artists go when their records aren't played
on commercial radio anymore.
(December
9, 2006)
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