Who invented the juno awards

It was really a fantastic experience and it sort of changed everything for me at that point, just being able to reach a lot more people. Porter : Some people say, "Oh, Junos, whatever, it's awards for music, who cares, doesn't make a difference," but I think it actually can be pretty important to the artists particularly if their music is political and meaningful and purposeful. Fontaine : In Calgary, when Derek Miller won, he went up there and the first thing he said was, "You know.

I wish we had clean drinking water. This is an opportunity for artists to use their voices, and to not only reinforce their music identity but their Indigenous heritage.

Grey Gritt : It had kind of been this dream of mine to be nominated since I was a kid but I didn't know that it would ever happen and I had never thought about even applying for the Juno up to that point. Under some encouragement from a friend of ours, we submitted. Tiffany Ayalik : The category was just synonymous with Buffy Sainte-Marie: a beautiful woman with fringe and beads. She's my hero and then Leela I know from growing up in Yellowknife. Her dad was my music teacher and I just was always thinking the Gildays were a super awesome family, and those were the two names I associated with the category.

Gritt : Being nominated was such a gift and also such a validating experience. To be acknowledged by your peers as promoting excellence, and good music, and hard work.

Honestly, we were writing our thank-you speech at the table because we didn't think we were gonna win and as the night went on we're like, "I suppose we could win, I mean, it's one in five, so maybe.

In the end, we didn't even use the speech because we were so flabbergasted that I forgot how to even use a phone and I couldn't turn up the brightness on my phone. Ayalik : Let's be honest, we all had tears in our eyes. It was hard to look down because they were full of water. Gritt : We cried all friggin' day. It was an incredible weekend. Ayalik : We're just two kids from the north on a red carpet, and there's Kiefer Sutherland in the corner, and Buffy's over there, Tribe is over there having some steak.

Be cool, be cool! It's a compliment of what I've been doing, especially of my solo career now that I'm by myself and on my own. It's good to get that recognition as a solo artist and I think that was the biggest thing for me personally this year. Porter : The big thing for me is that we don't always get featured on the big show.

I received my Juno in at the big dinner the night before the Junos. At some point I would like to see us on the big stage on the big night at the big performance.

There's no reason we should be shuttled down to the non-rockstar categories. It's sad the way they do it actually; pop stars and rock stars are the only ones featured. What about the jazz artists, the classical people, blues artists and folk artists? Are we not important enough? I was not a big fan of being an Aboriginal artist.

I mean I look at myself as an artist first, not as an Aboriginal artist. That's my only thing I had against the category. I think there were a lot of Native artists that kind of shared my same thoughts but that's nothing compared to what it does for you. Especially, the youth coming up and knowing that you can do your work, do what you do as an artist and be recognized at that top level.

Gritt : I think without the Indigenous category, I'm not sure how we would have fit in. I'm not sure if we necessarily would have been given the time of day and I can certainly understand why some people don't apply to this category or don't apply to any category at all, and that's totally valid and I support that.

I think it's in the same way that it's broad, but it allows us to fit in. Ayalik : When people say, "Should we even still have this category? Some areas in Canada, like are we still in right now? There's still rampant racism. There are considerable barriers to Indigenous artists that frankly do not exist for any other category of artists.

Even talking about barriers like having poor internet. Applying for the Junos is tricky. Gritt : We know someone who wasn't able to apply because their internet doesn't allow for it. They couldn't upload their material, it's dial-up speeds. But also, we've got to create, but how am I supposed to record when I don't have water?

Or I don't have food security? Or I don't have an ability to travel out to get equipment or to work with people? Gilday : I moved back home in when I released my first record but I still wasn't really able to afford to live at home because the north is very, very expensive. I was basically on the road 11 months a year. So you take that all into consideration. Some people call for the eradication of that category, but we've literally had it for only 24 years so that doesn't seem remotely equitable to how much time we went without it.

We should have that category and we should also be in other categories at the same time because we were just excluded for so much time that if you want to make good on that, and to make a difference and to make things equitable. It might seem to some folks as unfair but if they were seeing things from this side, this perspective, they might see how that is only like a tiny, tiny, tiny drop in the bucket of what can be done.

When else in history do you have a band that won a Juno who has a female Indigenous and transgender, two-spirit, Indigenous, kind of queer band winning a Juno? I've been openly queer and two-spirit and transgender and non-binary for the past six years, and other identities for even longer, so for me to be in the category and to go up and win, I'm like, when else has this ever happened?

Gilday : People talk about stereotyping and marginalization when it comes to this category and I really don't think that's what's happening. It's not a poverty category, it's a strong category and actually I wish the Indigenous musicians who haven't submitted to it would submit so we can continue to increase and raise the level of professionalism and musicianship in the category. But that's their choice. Bomberry : One thing though the Junos did was [add] flexibility for craft categories.

Like, blues Aboriginal, roots, those that aren't based on sales. They allow you to submit into two craft categories, that's just within the last maybe seven, eight years. The Indigenous category is there to help people get their feet in the door. The holiday, which is a big deal elsewhere, is becoming a thing here, too.

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CRIA begat the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences; the purely merit-based categories of the initial awards gave way, in key categories, to nominations based on sales; and the Junos became largely a celebration of commercial success. The awards acquired "a negative connotation" in some quarters, admits Susanne Boyce, who brought the Junos to CTV in and who is about to leave the project and CTV after a management shuffle. John's, where a novel approach was tried. The event's producers got in touch in advance with the local music community chiefly Great Big Sea, the island's leading roots-music band , invented a week-long club festival, laid on fan-oriented events, and created a broadcast that celebrated Newfoundland's contributions to Canadian music.

The results galvanized the town and gave the broadcast a fresh, site-specific feeling. Every year since, in Halifax, Ottawa, Edmonton, Winnipeg and other cities, the Junos have refined and extended the local-is-beautiful idea, while highlighting musicians with national or international appeal.

People are proud of their hometown, but they also like to feel like they're part of it all. It didn't hurt that local communities and their governments were willing to pay for a visit from Juno and the expanding hoopla that went with it.

The local economic benefits are real: St. Toronto is still the biggest music market in the country, and Juno's producers decided it was time to see whether the buzz-generating ancillary events developed in smaller cities would work in Hogtown. That the grass-roots strategy has worked everywhere else probably helped save the Juno broadcasts from the long ratings decline suffered by the Grammy Awards, which have been gradually losing viewers since the late eighties.

Juno ratings have remained pretty stable over the past decade, which may count as success when TV audiences are fragmenting and declining globally. Like the Grammys, the Juno broadcast includes few actual awards: Only eight of the 40 will be given out during this year's two-and-a-half hour broadcast. It's essentially a national music variety show with a few prizes and victory speeches.