DC is the beneficiary of world-class music creatives who enrich and inspire millions of people around the world! The Wammie Awards is The MusicianShip’s 35-year-old awards show aimed at recognizing DC, MD, and VA area artists & musicians for their artistic works and community impact across our region.
Mumu Fresh won the coveted 2023 Hitmaker Award
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.
FEATURE
In an in-depth roundtable discussion featuring some of the highest-ranking Recording Academy leaders, learn why the new Best Song For Social Change Special Merit Award is a momentous development for the music industry at large.
|GRAMMYS/OCT 13, 2022 – 08:00 PM
The GRAMMYs’ newly announced award for Best Song For Social Change differs significantly from the other GRAMMY Award categories announced earlier this year and debuting at the upcoming 2023 GRAMMYs, officially known as the 65th GRAMMY Awards.
Rather than a traditional GRAMMY Award, the Best Song For Social Change award is a Special Merit Award. This means the award will be determined by a Blue Ribbon Committee and ratified by the Recording Academy Board of Trustees.
Proposed by our Recording Academy members, the new Best Song For Social Change Special Merit Award now represents one of the highest honors a socially conscious song can receive. It also recognizes the songwriters creating message-driven music that responds to and addresses the social issues of our time head-on while inspiring positive global impact.
To qualify for the Best Song For Social Change Special Merit Award, which recognizes a song that has had profound social influence and impact, a submitted song should contain lyrical content that: addresses a timely social issue; explores a subject impacting a community of people in need; and promotes awareness, raises consciousness, and builds empathy.
Songwriters can submit songs that meet the eligibility criteria here now through Friday, Oct. 14
