Juno awards selection process set to begin

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MUSIC BIZ 101

The excitement of last year's Juno Awards (www.juno-awards.ca) ceremonies in Hull/Ottawa will surely spill over to this year's Junos to be held in Edmonton on April 4.

Although the deadline to submit your work was Dec. 26 for this year's Juno Awards, the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) have discretion in accepting submissions after the cutoff date. In the juried categories, which are not based on sales, the deadline for submissions must accommodate the timeline required for the nominating and voting process. Virtually every genre of music is submitted in the Aboriginal Recording of the Year Award.

The first task of the jury committee is to determine the Aboriginality of the recording. Basically, the members try to determine if the music and/or lyrics have Aboriginal content.

The artist does not have to be Aboriginal. And, in fact, on two occasions that I am aware of, two non-Aboriginal artists were nominated in the category.

The committee then tries to determine if any releases have not been submitted and to contact the artist or agent to encourage them to apply. From my personal experience working with three Aboriginal nominees and winners-Claude McKenzie with Innu Town, Florent Vollant with Nipaiamianan and Derek Miller with Music is the Medicine- a serious discussion arose about the Aboriginal award category in relation to the other award categories. By this I mean a decision had to be made to determine if these artists should submit in another category, which may be based on sales.

Once the jury has forwarded its recommendations to the CARAS board through the executive director, potential judges from each province or region are contacted in writing by the CARAS staff. Each judge is asked to accept or reject the offer to judge in writing. Some judges, in fact, reject the offer as they feel they are not qualified to judge music from such a wide range. Other times, there may be a conflict of interest in being a judge. I applaud their decision not to participate since it recognizes the hard work of all the artists, musicians and technical crew who submit annually.

The roster of potential judges is forwarded to the Music Advisory Committee to be culled for future jury duty. Not surprisingly, judges do not have to be Aboriginal to vote. Most of the judges however are usually asked personally if they wouldn't mind being included in the jury roster.

Once the final selection of judges has been made, the accounting firm sends each judge a box of releases that they get to keep. Based on the judge's top 10, a roster of five names are re-submitted back to the judges of which they must select their top three by numbering them accordingly. With all 10 judges submitting their top three, the winner is determined. No one knows who the judges are until the night of the awards ceremony when the program is handed out.

If you think you might make a good judge you can submit your name to CARAS by calling 1-888-440-5866 and sending a short bio to the Aboriginal Recording of the Year award committee.

The artists, on the other hand, must decide their three best songs that they think their recording should be judged on or a single song that captures the Aboriginal essence of their music.

This column is for reference and education only and is not intended to be a substitute for legal advice. The author assumes no responsibility or liability arising from any outdated information, errors, omissions, claims, demands, damages, actions, or causes of actions from the use of any of the above. Ann can be reached at abrascoupe@hotmail.com.