Grammy Awards strive to diversify
Nominees increased from five to eight in top four fields
“The more the merrier” — and, presumably, the greater the diversity — is the guiding principle behind one of the biggest changes to the Grammy Awards process in recent years. The Recording Academy will up the number of nominees from five to eight for its 2019 Grammy ceremony in each of the general categories of record, album, song and best new artist.
The changes are detailed in a letter going out this week to all 24,000 academy members advising them of several modifications that are part of the ongoing process of fine-tuning the awards from year to year.
They arrive as the Grammy Awards are facing increased scrutiny over diversity, a conversation that accelerated after Recording Academy President and Chief Executive Neil Portnow stated that women in the music industry needed to “step up” after this year’s male-dominated Grammy Awards results.
In a statement on the changes, Portnow said, “Throughout the year, we team up with music people across all genres and disciplines to consider revisions and subsequently make amendments to our rules and entry guidelines to ensure we’re keeping up with our ever-changing industry and meeting the needs of music creators.”
The Recording Academy and Portnow individually came in for considerable criticism from various corners following the 2018 award show in January.
Musicians including Pink and Sheryl Crow tweeted harsh reactions to the dominance of males among Grammy nominees, and some music executives also publicly criticized Portnow’s post-awards show comment that the time had come for women to “step up” to be better represented in the annual awards process.
Crow on Twitter argued that the Grammys should reinstate separate male and female categories. In a large restructuring and trimming of categories, the Grammys in 2011 essentially did away with divisions by gender. “Who will young girls be inspired by to pick up a guitar and rock when most every category is filled with men?” she asked.
Several weeks after the ceremony the academy announced the formation of a task force to study conscious and unconscious biases behind the disparity between male and female nominees.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s chief of staff Tina Chen was hired to assemble and oversee the task force, which includes 12 other women and four men. It comprises songwriters, performers, producers, entertainment executives and academics. Crow, Common, Andra Day, Jimmy Jam and Cam are among those on the committee.
Shortly before this year’s Grammy Awards, a USC Annenberg study of nominations in five top awards categories over the previous five years showed that 90.7 per cent of nominees were male and just 9.3 per cent were female.
That was at least in part because record and album of the year nominations include producers and engineers, fields that historically have been maledominated. Women, according to the USC study, represent just 12 per cent of the music community.
The academy conducted its own tally across all 84 of last year’s categories and found the male-female split to be 83 per cent male to 17 per cent female. Additionally, the Recording Academy stated that women constitute 21 per cent of its membership.
Academy officials concluded that “the gender composition of our membership and nominations reflect that of the music community, according to the study.”
Nevertheless, the organization’s letter to members in February concluded that “it’s not enough to reflect the community. “We must be leaders in moving our industry toward greater inclusion and representation,” academy officials wrote in announcing the task force. “Women are 50 per cent of our world. We need their voice and presence at every level.”