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In an attempt to stay in tune with the ever-evolving music landscape and better serve its community of music creators and professionals, The Latin Recording Academy has announced two new categories: Best Contemporary Mexican Music Album and Best Performance of Latin electronic music.
Previously criticized for overlooking important regional Mexican artists, especially within the four main categories, the Latin Academy now paves the way for better recognition of the burgeoning Mexican music scene. The newly introduced category of best contemporary Mexican music album will highlight vocal or instrumental albums in Spanish, and will require at least 51% new material while maintaining at least 60% of the essence of Mexican musical genres.
Simultaneously, the Academy embraces a new field of electronic music, introducing the best Latin electronic music performance category. Singles and songs apply, whether vocal or instrumental, that contain a minimum of 51% performance time of Latin electronic music genres, including remixes.
In addition to these essential additions, several modifications have been made to the existing categories. Among them, a name change for the best album category from MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) / MAPB (Música Afro Portuguesa-Brasileira)” (adding the back part after the slash) in the Portuguese language field; and a modification of the definition of the category of best singer-songwriter song in the singer-songwriter area. “For songs or cuts with at least 60% of the lyrics in Spanish, Portuguese or any regional autochthonous dialect,” the statement says; Before that percentage was 51%.
There are also new eligibility criteria for the best long form music video category in the music video area. “To qualify, videos in the Best Long Version Music Video category must be at least 12 minutes long (it has been reduced from 20 minutes),” they detail.
These updates take effect immediately and will be reflected in the 25th edition of the Latin Grammys, which will be held in November. For more information, visit www.latingrammy.com.
