The Recording Academy’s trustees have recently approved a number of changes to the Grammys, including the addition of a “Roots Gospel” category that will encompass Southern Gospel as well as other traditional gospel styles. You can read all about it below.
Here are the pertinent bits from a larger press release. (SOURCE)
*The categories of the Gospel/Contemporary Christian Music Field have been restructured as follows:
Previous Category Structure
- Best Gospel/Contemporary Christian Music Performance
- Best Gospel Song
- Best Contemporary Christian Music Song
- Best Gospel Album
- Best Contemporary Christian Music Album
New Category Structure
- Best Gospel Performance/Song
- Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song
- Best Gospel Album
- Best Contemporary Christian Music Album
- Best Roots Gospel Album
The same number of categories remains in the Field (five), and now both the artist(s) and songwriter(s) of new material will be honored in the Best Gospel Performance/Song and Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song categories. Changes to the Field were made in the interest of clarifying the criteria, representing the current culture and creative DNA of the gospel and Contemporary Christian Music communities, and better reflecting the diversity and authenticity of today’s gospel music industry, including:
- Place the growing and increasingly popular rap and hip-hop music into the contemporary category where the industry and fans feel it belongs
- Provide a category for traditional Southern gospel and other “roots” gospel albums as both a protector of the heritage of this music and an acknowledgement of the growing interest and support of these genres
- Recognize the critical contribution of both songwriters and performers by combining songwriters and artists into the Best Gospel Performance/Song and Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song categories
- Appropriately integrate artists, songwriters, albums and songs along creative and aesthetic lines.
As in years past, I expect Grammy voters to remain as clueless as ever when it comes to selecting an appropriate representative of traditional Gospel music…but I suppose they deserve some degree of credit for trying.
Well, this certainly seems like an improvement from the previous arrangement, in terms of Southern Gospel being recognized. How it will be executed….who knows?
I’m encouraged that Southern Gospel was specifically mentioned. That being said, if some Country star from 20-40 years ago releases a Gospel CD, I expect this is the category where it will be placed. There’s nothing in the definition to exclude numerous styles, so I don’t look for this to be “our” category exclusively. Before they did away with it a few years ago, the category was Country, Bluegrass and Southern Gospel together. It sounds like it’s pretty much going to be the same category, but again, they didn’t mention Country or Bluegrass this time…so maybe it’s going to be more heavily SG. We can hope.