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The WOMEX Awards 08
Quality, creativity, impact
The WOMEX 08 Award – Two This Year
WOMEX Award
WOMEX Awards 99 - 07
The WOMEX 08 Award – Two This Year
 The WOMEX Award is now ten years old. In the past we have honoured the extraordinary artists and professionals from our community deserving of special praise. This year we have decided to present two WOMEX Awards, one to an artist, and the other to honour an educational institution. 1... It is with great pleasure that we announce the winner of the WOMEX Award for Professional Excellence:
The Folk Music Department of the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland.
"Without the Folk department of the Sibelius Academy, there would be nothing like the folk scene there is in Finland. It's amazing the way it has allowed so many flowers to bloom." Accordionist Maria Kalaniemi in conversation with Songlines
Read more...
2... WOMEX is proud to announce the winner of the 10th annual WOMEX Award for World Music:
Muzsikás (Hungary)
...in this, their 35th year. This is the group of artists who put Hungarian folk music on the international map. With their collaborations with Márta Sebestyén, and now in their superlative work since she departed, they have been the foremost ambassadors for music from Hungary, with a special emphasis on music from Transylvania. "Without Muzsikás, the Hungarian "táncház (dancehouse)" movement, the special Hungarian klezmer-revival and the bridge between Hungarian
folk music and Béla Bartók's work would not exist," says Csaba Lokös, Promoter of the world music stage at the Sziget Festival and a long-term collaborator with the artists.
Read more...
WOMEX Award
Quality, creativity, impact. Since its introduction in 1999, the WOMEX Award has been honouring world music on the international level. Musical excellence, social effectiveness, commercial success, political impact, lifetime achievement - any or all of these might make one a worthy recipient.
Being the mother of all awards, and supporting musical creativity and fertility, it is only fitting that the mother of all and everything serves as the symbol for our tributes in the name of the WOMEX Award. Especially when it is represented by a statue that was created at a time when there was no such thing as Asia or Europe, black or white, first world or third. The Award figurine is an ancient mother goddess statue dating back about 6000 years to the Neolithic age. It was found in Haçilar in modern-day Turkey and bears witness to the existence of a matriarchal society. Such a female goddess appears in many ancient mythologies as an initial primal figure, representing fertility and procreation either as the earth itself or as a mother giving birth to the world and all the creatures in it.
The WOMEX Award and the figure that represents it stand for life itself. Life is what music is all about … or should that be: music is what life is all about?
WOMEX Awards 99 - 07
So far we - you - have honoured Juan de Marcos and Nick Gold (1999), Mahotella Queens (2000), Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (2001) and Jivan Gasparyan (2002). Since 2003 we took two steps further: In 2003 we honoured with Freemuse - The World Forum on Music and Censorship, for the first time an institution rather than an individual. Followed by the sixth WOMEX Award in 2004 which was dedicated Marc Hollander and Crammed Discs for 25 years of pioneering label work in the field of world music. The Award 2005 was given to the almost hundred-years-old energetic Taarab singer Bi Kidude from Zanzibar. In 2006 the Award went to Colombia's incomparable Totó La Momposina , in recognition of her ground-breaking work for Afro-Caribbean music and dance. The Award 07 paid homage to Andy Palacio (1960-2008) and Ivan Duran, both of Belize.. See our archive for more information on all WOMEX Award winners.
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