Grandmaster Flash to receive prestigious music prize
LOS ANGELES Grandmaster Flash, classical violinist Anne-sophie Mutter and the Playing for Change music charity have been named the 2019 laureates for Sweden’s Polar Music Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious music awards. Each laureate receives prize money of one million Swedish kronor (about $120,000).
The awards will be presented at a gala ceremony and banquet at Stockholm’s Grand Hotel by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden on June 11 and will be broadcast live on Swedish national television.
Grandmaster Flash, born Joseph Saddler, said: “It is such an honour, because a lot of times in our culture, what we do as DJS gets overlooked. So for these people to say, let’s give this to someone who doesn’t necessarily use a microphone as their gift ... for me to be picked out of so many people, I am so, so deeply honoured.”
Mutter said: ”It is a huge honour to be in this illustrious group of musicians who have received the Polar Music Prize. I can’t wait to come to Stockholm and meet the other recipients.”
Whitney Kroenke, co-founder of the Playing for Change Foundation, said: “This is incredibly humbling and mind-blowing — we are ecstatic. We started the project so that musicians that would not otherwise be seen or heard, would have the chance to express themselves and be recognized.”
Flash is one of the undisputed pioneers of hip hop, emerging from the Bronx in the 1970s and creating, with the group the Furious Five (particularly rappers Melle Mel and Cowboy), some of the most influential songs of early hip hop.
While their early releases had a party vibe, the group quickly pivoted to address the social issues reflected in the early 1970s records by Marvin Gaye and The Temptations, emerging in 1982 with The Message, arguably the first socially conscious hip-hop record. Flash’s Twitter profile boasts, with no exaggeration, “The first DJ to make the turntable a musical instrument.”
Variety