The NWT Music Awards are a set of awards created by music nwt, and their importance cannot be understated.
Any of our artists, uh, it’s important that we recognize them here, build that hometown crowd. So it’s not just about the artists in the room, it’s about the public. The public being there, showing their support. Showing that they are behind our musicians, their brand, and what they do, the talent, they help showcase our culture here out to the rest of the world. They help bring our communities together and they help build an industry.
Trevor Sinclair of music, NWT sat and talked about these awards with me, and also mentioned that they will be inducting the first three people into the NWT Music Hall of Fame. Each of the induces represents a different tentpole of the NWT music scene, and those are
culture, community and industry. So from the cultural perspective will be inducting into our inaugural inductees will be the Yellowknives Dene Drummers. Certainly, we’ve seen them at many, many events. They always open and close things. And they are a defining part of the NWT culture. The, the second representing community will be Ted Wesley. Now Ted passed away last December. And we are very excited to honor him into this hall of fame as him and a, a number of other people were the inaugural folks that started folk the rock. Ted has toured all around the north. And he was all about bringing community together. And then representing industry. We were looking at somebody who has a long history of being involved in the industry and recording albums, trying to get those albums out into the world and is still active. And for that, we have Norm Glowach so we’re super excited to have these three as our inaugural induces. And hopefully we’ll see the public stand behind them, support them and in everything that they’ve done and continue to do.
With the NWT music awards. It’s not just the artists and the people behind the scenes, making music that is getting honoured, It’s the venues as well.
I’m actually really excited about this award. So for example, this year we have the top four nominees that came out are the Northern arts and cultural center. So we’ve got sort of that formal kind of theatre style sitting that, and these, these venues are super important because of course a performer can’t perform unless they have some. In which to perform. And certainly, as we’re coming out of COVID, a lot of these folks have done a great job in ensuring that our, our performers could. Get out there and perform over the past several years, but NAC is one example and then there are those festivals. So we also have the Great Northern Arts Festival out of, Inuvik and Old Town Ramble and Ride here in Yellowknife are also in the top four nominees. So recognize those festivals that are persevered and make sure they, they, that highlight our artists and give them opportunities to build that local crowd. But then the fourth is also super important is those bars and those pubs that a lot of us go to for that bit of late night And we have Dirty O’Fergie’s out of Fort Smith. Who has been nominated who represents them very well, who has made sure our artists continue to get paid well to be at these pubs and bars because they bring in a great audience for those businesses. And so we really wanted to highlight those venues as well. -Trevor Sinclair Music NWT
