One of the new honors the Grammy Awards will introduce at their next ceremony is song for social change — a special-merit award that “recognizes creators of message-driven music that responds to the social issues of our time and has the potential for positive global impact.”
While the honor is “curated by a blue-ribbon committee,” there’s little question that the number of submissions will have an impact — and according to the Recording Academy, 95,000 of the 115,000 submissions received have been for Iranian musician Shervin Hajipour’s song, “Baraye,” a protest song about 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after being arrested and beaten by Iran’s so-called morality police for not wearing a proper head covering, in line with the country’s Islamic law.
The country has been wracked by protests — including women burning their hijabs, or headdresses, in front of police — in the weeks since her death was made public, despite the government’s efforts to suppress them and attempts at media coverage.
