Gaga, Grande top MTV VMA noms

Giddens is Silkroad’s new face

NEW YORK, Aug 3, (AP): It’s raining nominations for Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande’s “Rain on Me” at the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards, which will present new categories focused on live performances and music videos created at home during the coronavirus pandemic.

Gaga and Grande both scored nine nominations each, including video of the year for their No. 1 dance hit. “Rain on Me” is also competing for song of the year, best collaboration, best pop, best cinematography, best visual effects and best choreography.

Billie Eilish and The Weeknd, the second-most nominated acts with six, are also up for video of the year with “everything i wanted” and “Blinding Lights.” Others nominated for the top prize include Taylor Swift’s “The Man,” Future and Drake’s “Life Is Good” and Eminem’s “Godzilla,” which features late rapper Juice WRLD.

The VMAs will air live on Aug. 30 from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said last month “the event will follow all safety guidance, including limited or no audience.” This year’s show introduces two new categories reflecting the current pandemic times: best music video from home and best quarantine performance.

Grande and Justin Bieber’s No. 1 hit “Stuck with U” will compete for best music video from home along with Drake’s “Toosie Slide,” John Legend’s “Bigger Love,” 5 Seconds of Summer’s “Wildflower,” blink-182’s “Happy Days” and twenty one pilots’ “Level of Concern,” which topped the Billboard rock songs chart for seven weeks and features the lyrics, “Will you be my little quarantine?”

R&B duo Chloe x Halle, who have successfully promoted their new album during the pandemic with impressive live performances mostly put on in their tennis court and outside their new home, are nominated for best quarantine performance for “Do It” from MTV’s virtual prom “Prom-athon.” Other nominees include Gaga’s “Smile” from the TV special “One World: Together At Home”;Legend’s “#togetherathome” concert; DJ D-Nice’s “Club MTV presents #DanceTogether”; CNCO’s “MTV Unplugged At Home”; and Post Malone’s tribute to Nirvana.

Apart from the pandemic, protest songs reflecting the Black experience created in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and others also earned VMA nominations. R&B star H.E.R.’s “I Can’t Breathe,” Anderson.Paak’s “Lockdown” and Lil Baby’s “The Bigger Picture” all scored nominations in the video for good category.

Swift, who released a surprise album last week, will also compete for video for good with her song about sexism, “The Man.” She scored five nominations overall, while Drake, Dua Lipa, J Balvin and Bieber earned four nominations apiece.

Megan Thee Stallion and DaBaby - who both launched No. 1 pop hits this year - earned three nods each, including bids for artist of the year. Their competition includes Gaga, Bieber, The Weeknd and Post Malone.

BTS, Harry Styles, Roddy Ricch, Post Malone, Future, Karol G

Chart

and Doja Cat - who topped the charts this year with her Dr. Lukeproduced smash “Say So” - also earned three nods each. Starting Thursday through Aug. 23, fans can vote for VMA winners across 15 gender-neutral categories here.

Silkroad, the acclaimed international musical collective with a social conscience, has a new face - and a fresh sense of purpose.

Grammy-winning folk singer and instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens is Silkroad’s new artistic director, taking the baton from renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who founded the group two decades ago, Silkroad said Tuesday.

The 43-year-old North Carolina native is the first woman and first multiracial artist to lead Silkroad. The Boston-based organization is known not just for its touring ensemble comprised of world-class musicians from all over the globe, but also for its efforts to use the arts to bridge differences across races, countries and cultures.

“My keenest desire for Silkroad is a sharpening and reinterpretation of what it means for the ‘right now,’” Giddens said in a statement, adding: “What is more American than the gathering of influences from disparate areas of the globe to create something unique and fantastic?”

She makes her debut Wednesday evening with “Recitals from the World Stage,” a virtual presentation prerecorded for Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. Ma, who launched Silkroad in 1998 and stepped down as artistic director in 2017, called Giddens “an extraordinary human being and musician.”

“She lives Silkroad’s values, at once rooted in history and its many musics, and is an advocate for the contemporary voices that can move us to work together for a better world,” Ma said.

Talent

“In addition to her enormous musical talent, she fosters an immense social consciousness and creates unity through her art,” said Kathy Fletcher, Silkroad’s executive director.

Silkroad has recorded seven albums, including “Sing Me Home,” which won a Grammy in 2016 for best world music. Founded to “seek and practice radical cultural collaboration in many forms,” it holds training workshops and residency programs for music teachers and musicians around the globe.

The group takes its name from the ancient Silk Road trade route that linked China to the West, with the two hemispheres exchanging not only goods but ideas.

Giddens, the daughter of a white father and Black mother who married three years after the Supreme Court struck down all bans on interracial marriage in 1967, has won accolades for spotlighting African-American contributions to banjo, bluegrass and folk music.

She won a Grammy in 2011 for best traditional folk album with the string band Carolina Chocolate Drops, and last year, she was the first recipient of the Americana Music Association’s inaugural Legacy of Americana Award.