Latino Music Cafe

2009 Latin Grammy Awards - My Objections and Ideas

Posted on 08. Nov, 2009 by Hector Aviles in Latino Music

Awards are a diffucult thing, but people love them. I’m one who is always disappointed with music awards. For one, I always seem to disagree with some of the selections for award winners. Another reason is that sometimes there are two very good entries in one category, and only one can win.

Luis Enrique’s “Ciclos” vs. Jose Lugo’s “Guasabara”

A case in point for my 2nd point is the award for Best Salsa Album. I reviewed Luis Enrique’s “Ciclos” in a previous post (link at the end of this post) and think very highly of it. Luis Enrique and Sergio Geogre released a fantastic recording, with good music, good lyrics, and excellent performance. But if I had a vote, I would have given it to Jose Lugo’s “Guasbara”.

“Guasabara” is an exceptional album, recorded in Puerto Rico with a big band of some of the best talent in the island, and bringing some talent from aboard as well. Jose Lugo fronts his big band with several Salsa “soneros” who give the recording an an “all-star” flavor. The singers line-up includes the performer of the Grammy nominated song for the album, Gilberto Santa Rosa, joined by Victor Manuelle, Cano Estremera, Herman Olivera, and cuban Isaac Delgado. You can’t ask for more.

Latin Music Academy didn’t like Big Bands

Bobby Sanabria

This 2009 was not a good one for big bands. Bobby Sanabria did a super recording with his version of Machito’s classic “Kenya” with his release of “Kenya Revisited”. But the judges decided for the musical reunion of the Valdes family. Master cuban pianists Bebo and Chucho Valdes recorded a beauty in “Juntos Para Siempre”, which I really liked and highly recommend. The recordings touch opposite sides of the tempo spectrum, as “Kenya Revisited” is full of energy, making it hard to sit still through it, while “Juntos Para Siempre” is a mellower piano album. I love both, but feel Sanabria’s work was more elaborate and therfore, harder to put together as well as he did. 

But the Academy stirred away from big bands this year. I wonder if this is may be to try to keep it open to all albmus to win. I speculate they may be thinking of not making it predictable for musicians that if they record a big band album well, it will be a winning ticket for a Grammy. If that is the thinking, I can understand the twist of “healthy paranoia”. But this could swing the other way and exclude big bands for winning just for making a big band recording. The salomonic solution is to evaluate them on a case-by-case basis, of course. Easy to say for us non-judges. Trying to remain as objective as possible, I would have given the “Best Latin Jazz” Grammy to Bobby Sanabria.

And then you have the “What the…”

Gilberto Santa Rosa

Here you have one of my favorite Salsa artists, Gilberto Santa Rosa, winning a Grammy with what I consider a ”B” effort with “Una Navidad con Gilberto”. Gilberto has been passed over for Grammys when he recorded much better albums, yet gets a Grammy for a Christmas album which, even within the Traditional category; heck, even if you sub-classify it into the Christmas category, is by no means expectacullar. For comparison purposes, last year’s Victor Manuelle’s “Navidad a Mi Estilo” was a much better recording, but although nominated, didn’t win the Grammy (it went to Gloria Estefan’s “90 Millas”). Parhaps it was a timming thing, where Victor Manuelle would’ve won if Gloria Estafan was not around, and Gilberto had an “easy field” to run against this year. But regardless, perhaps Orestes Vilato did deserve to win that category this year.

Possible solutions towards fair awards:

It it at all possible to have fair awards? Well, we know it’s impossible to please everyone, including me, so why loose any sleep on this? Well, I’m not, the Academy certainly isn’t, but I’m not so sure about the musicians. There are financial rewards that come with winning the little golden phonogram statue.

I have a couple of ideas on how we could improve the fairness of the award selections:

1. Make public the who are the judges and their vote. I won’t take credit for this idea, as the sport of boxing has been doing this for decades. Also the Olympics use the same public judging method. Why not the Grammys, and while we are at it, the Oscars as well (but that’s another blog). That way the vote will really have the scrutiny of the public. You may even want to do as in figure skating, and throught he high and low votes out. This would really make things interesting.

2. Give the public participation in the vote. Another idea I cannot claim, as Major League Baseball has been doing this for their All-Star balloting for the longest time. But I would propose something a bit different. My proposal is that the public’s vote would count as a percentage of the total vote. If you use a panel of judges, say like in gymnastics, the public vote would count as one of the judges. So we would have representation, but not exclusivity.

What do you think? Let me know what you think of the 2009 Latin Grammy Awards and of my ideas!

Related LatinoWebCafe.com Blog:

Luis Enrique “Ciclos” CD Review

Tags: Bebo Valdes, Bobby Sanabria, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Gloria Estefan, Jose Lugo, Latin Grammy, latin music, Luis Enrique, Machito, salsa, Victor Manuelle