Grammy Awards

Grammy Awards, prizes given annually in the United States by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) for excellence in the recording industry. The name is derived from an early phonograph called a gramophone. The Grammy Awards are presented in February for recordings released during the previous eligibility period, which runs from October 1st to September 30th. They recognize outstanding performances of various types of music, including rock, folk, jazz, country, gospel, rhythm and blues, popular, and classical. In addition, NARAS gives honors for music videos, spoken-word recordings, motion-picture or television scores, album packaging and album notes, and promising new artists, as well as for composition, musical arrangement, engineering, and production. New categories are added and old categories are dropped as the industry changes and grows.

The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences was created in 1957 and the following year gave out the first Grammy Awards. Voting for Grammys occurs in three stages. First, record companies and NARAS members (who include musicians, record producers, and other professionals active in the field) enter recordings released during the year. The entries are then screened by music experts to guarantee eligibility and to ensure that recordings are classified in the proper category. Next, the academy’s voting membership, made up of creative or technical professionals who have contributed to several commercial recordings, nominates five entries in each category as finalists. The winners are selected from the list of finalists, again by the voting members of NARAS. Several special prizes, voted on by NARAS trustees, honor those who have made substantial contributions over many years. These honors are the Lifetime Achievement Award, Trustees Award, Technical Grammy Award, Grammy Legends Award, and Hall of Fame Award. NARAS created the Latin Grammy Awards in 2000 to recognize outstanding recordings that are predominantly in Spanish.