Wayne Wallace calls his 2011 Grammy nomination one of the greatest honours of his life. That’s why he’s now furious with the Grammys. “It was a great experience,” says the local trombonist-bandleader, whose “Bien Bien” was nominated for best Latin jazz album. “I want others to experience it.” But that just got a lot more unlikely for Latin jazz artists.
The Latin jazz album category was one of 31 fields dropped last month by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the group that runs the Grammys, as part of a move to streamline the awards show. In all, the group trimmed the number of categories from 109 to 78. Artists that normally would have submitted in the Latin jazz category now have to try their luck in the much broader fields of best jazz instrumental album or best jazz vocal album.
This, of course, has been a bitter pill to swallow for Wallace and many others in the Latin jazz community, who believe their genre merits its own category. And they haven’t been shy about voicing their concern about being lumped into the overall jazz fields. Opposition has been strongest from within the San Francisco and New York chapters of NARAS. In both cities, NARAS members, other Latin musicians and their supporters have held news conferences to further alert Grammy’s governing board that they don’t plan to go down without a fight.
“It’s hard to imagine that we have to beg for recognition again,” says Oakland’s John Santos,a key participant in the current effort, as well as veteran of the original crusade to get the Grammys to first adopt the Latin jazz album category in 1995. “We already did this. We fought hard for it. We earned it in the ’90s. “Then they decide, unceremoniously, that we no longer deserve it. And we can’t let that happen.”
The roar over Latin jazz has been, by far, the loudest. Officials from NARAS say that they haven’t heard many complaints from artists working in other fields affected by the consolidation — which includes blues, Zydeco and other American roots styles. The group also dropped separate awards for male and female vocal performances in pop, rock, R&B and country. The moves had no effect on the Latin Grammys, which is a separate awards show. There are many reasons why the restructuring was necessary, says Bill Freimuth, vice president of awards for NARAS.
Perhaps the most important, he says, was that the awards ceremony had grown too large in scope. The number of categories had grown from 28 in the award show’s first year, 1959, to 109 last year — and Freimuth says many felt the result was to weaken the value of a Grammy. That’s an argument Santos and others aren’t buying. “That’s a crock of (expletive),” Santos says.
“Giving a Grammy to a Latin jazz musician or a blues musician by no means decreases the value of the Grammy Beyoncé wins or Lady Gaga wins.” Bay Area Latin jazz artists plan to keep pushing to have the decision reversed — and to have Latin jazz again get its due at the Grammys. “Even if it doesn’t happen this year, we are determined to get this reinstated and make sure that something like this never happens again,” Wallace says. And that’s certainly in the realm of possibilities, Freimuth says.
“That’s one of the things that I like about our process — that it’s completely changeable from year to year,” he says. “We have a big rule book, and everything in that rule book is up for change. What we announced is in stone for 2012, but beyond that is anybody’s guess.” Some Latin musicians, however, aren’t willing to throw in the towel yet on 2012. “They’re saying, ‘I guess all the musicians who made CDs this year are just out of luck,’ ” Santos says. “And we’re saying that’s not acceptable.”
