The 19th Korean Music Awards announced its awards candidates, the “Achievement Award” belongs to rock band Devils
Starting in 2004, the “Korean version of Grammy Awards” – Korean Music Awards – has reached its 19th year.
The 19th Korea Popular Music Awards (KMA) recently held an online ceremony to announce this year’s nominees on Feb 9th. Kim Chang-nam, chairman of the selection committee of the Korea Music Awards, has even called it the “Korean version of Grammy Awards”. The meeting was filmed at Nodeulseom Live House in Yongsan-gu, Seoul and broadcast live on YouTube.
The “KMA” is a music awards ceremony encompassing various music genres in Korea. Unlike other music awards ceremonies, it is also nicknamed the “Korean version of the Grammy Awards” because it places great weight on musicality evaluation rather than focusing on the popularity of the moment. The winners are decided through voting between academia, popular music critics, media music reporters, music broadcast PDs, and civic group officials. Genre musicians such as bands, hip-hop, and folk have had the honor of winning the award, and have established themselves as the only music festival in the domestic popular music industry where musicians harmonize beyond the boundaries of mainstream and underground.
Previous Grand Prize winners include Loveholic, The The, Big Mama, Cho PD, Yoon Do-hyun, Lee Han-chul, Lee Juck, Jang Ki-ha and Faces, Sister’s Barbershop, Seoul Electric Band, Girls’ Generation, Psy, Cho Yong-pil, Big Bang, Park Jae-beom, Sunwoo Jung-ah, Hyuk-oh, and BTS. In terms of past winners, there is generally no genre bias compared to other music awards that focus only on a specific genre. It is taking the lead in enriching the “music ecosystem” by correcting the contradictions of the current music system, which is still not free under market logic and capital power.
At this year’s awards ceremony, a total of four grand categories, including “Album of the Year”, “Song of the Year”, “Musician of the Year” and “Rookie of the Year”, and a total of 19 categories of genre will be awarded. Singers and released albums which have been active for 12 months from December 1, 2020 to November 30, 2021 are eligible as nominees.
Along with the nomination, rock band Devils was selected for the “Achievement Award” and reaffirmed the purpose of the event. Starting this year, the awards ceremony has reorganized some genre sectors, including a separate K-pop division created from the Pop sector.
“There may be questions about whether K-pop can be distinguished as a genre, but considering that it has existed as a trend with a clear independent aesthetic orientation in our music market, and there were parts where too many parts of the pop division were concentrated, so we wanted to provide an opportunity to for it to shine separately,” they said.
Below is the list of candidates for all categories.
○ Musician of the Year
Kim Hyunchul, The Baluntius, BTS, IU, and Lee Rang.
○ Rookie of the Year.
aespa, Synth, StayC, Lee Mujin, Jellyfish.
○ Song of the Year
aespa’s “Next Level,” AKMU‘s “Falling,” BTS’ “Butter,” Lee Rang’s “A Wolf Appeared” and Lee Mujin’s “Traffic Light”.
○ Album of the Year
AKMU’s “Next Episode,” Kim Hyun-chul’s “City Breeze and Love Song,” IU’s “Lilac,” Lee Rang’s “A Wolf Appeared,” Chun Yong-sung’s “Submerged.”
