The Native American Music Awards or the NAMAs are an awards program presented annually by The Native American Music Association & Awards, which recognizes outstanding musical achievement among Native Americans. The awards were created in 1998 to offer Native American musicians in the music industry greater exposure and opportunities for mainstream recognition.
The awards show honors national recordings released in the previous calendar year that encompass traditional and contemporary Native American musical instrumentation and/or lyrics with strong native content or messages. Traditional music through history has been an integral part of Native American life and tribal identity, such as; round dance songs and flute music. Today, contemporary Native American music has grown to encompass many popular genres such as; rock, pop, blues, hip hop, country, and new age as well as some uniquely distinctive genres such as; Waila or Chicken scratch, and Native American church music.
Nominees are submitted and selected by a national Advisory membership, consisting of individuals directly involved in recording, manufacturing, distributing and promoting Native American music nationally. Winners are selected by a combined vote by the national membership and the general public, who can listen to and vote on nominees' tracks on the Native American Music Awards website.
The awards ceremony features live artist performances and 30 awards categories in various traditional and contemporary music genres, as well as Lifetime Achievement Awards and Hall of Fame inductions. At times the program expands beyond the United States to award indigenous music initiatives originating in parts of Canada, Central America and South America. NAMA also honors music contributions by non-Native artists in one category ("Native Heart").
The Annual Native American Music Awards, which USA Today urges to “take seriously” and Indian Country Today has called, “Awesome & Incredible,” is the largest professional membership-based organization for Contemporary and Traditional Native American Music Initiatives and consists of over 20,000 registered voting members and professionals in the field of Native American music. They also hold the largest Native American Music Library in the World with a national archive featuring a collection of over 10,000 audio and video recordings in all formats housed since 1990.
Read more about Native American Music Awards: 2011 13th Annual Awards, 2010 12th Annual Awards, 2009 11th Annual Awards, 2008 10th Annual Awards, Lifetime Achievement Awards and Hall of Fame Inductions, Previous Honorees
Famous quotes containing the words native american, native, american and/or music:
“...I have ... been guilty of watching Westerns without acknowledging that Native Americans have gone through the same madness as African Americans. Isn’t it extraordinary that sometimes the most offended have not seen others being offended?”
—Judith Jamison (b. 1943)
“There is too much sour grapes for my taste in the present American attitude. The time to denounce the bankers was when we were all feeding off their gold plate; not now! At present they have not only my sympathy but my preference. They are the last representatives of our native industries.”
—Edith Wharton (1862–1937)
“Cynicism makes things worse than they are in that it makes permanent the current condition, leaving us with no hope of transcending it. Idealism refuses to confront reality as it is but overlays it with sentimentality. What cynicism and idealism share in common is an acceptance of reality as it is but with a bad conscience.”
—Richard Stivers, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Culture of Cynicism: American Morality in Decline, ch. 1, Blackwell (1994)
“I fear I agree with your friend in not liking all sermons. Some of them, one has to confess, are rubbish: but then I release my attention from the preacher, and go ahead in any line of thought he may have started: and his after-eloquence acts as a kind of accompaniment—like music while one is reading poetry, which often, to me, adds to the effect.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)