Grammy Awards

Sierra Ferrell, fresh off her Artist and Album Of The Year wins at last Fall’s Americana Honors & Awards, went four-for-four in her first-ever nominations on Sunday at the 67th Grammy Awards. She shared American Roots Song honors with Nashville’s Melody Walker. Songwriter Ruthie Foster secured a first-ever Grammy for herself and her new label Sun Records. Billy Strings and the duo of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings won awards as well. While on the prime time broadcast, roots music didn’t get its turn.

This week's Tuesday night special showcases performances from Grammy-nominated artists in the American Roots, Folk, and Blues categories, including Sierra Ferrell, Shemekia Copeland, Sarah Jarosz, and more. Watch the full playlist here and listen to the replay live at 7 p.m. CDT on WMOT.

Welcome, Beyoncé, to the Americana movement. Among the R&B superstar’s personal record of 11 Grammy Award nominations announced on Friday is her song “Yaya”, a wild, finger-snapping, drum-line pounding, explicit track from the album Cowboy Carter. The innovative, country-inspired concept opus is up for Album of the Year overall and Best Country album too. The rest of the Americana and American roots fields look more conventional, with strong showings by Sierra Ferrell, Shemekia Copeland, and Aoife O’Donovan.

On a Grammy Awards when some popular genres of music represented themselves with swords and blood, the smashing of folding chairs, and a literal on-stage dumpster fire (and when classical and jazz seemed to not exist), country and roots music offered the world some moving examples of obligation, homage and collaboration. Between Joni Mitchell’s triumphant, first-ever Grammy performance and a Luke Combs/Tracy Chapman duet that stirred hearts on social media, this year’s ceremony, from a Los Angeles arena named for imaginary money, made the simplest songs look like the source of lasting value.

Bonnie Raitt and Brandi Carlile, arguably American roots music’s reigning matriarch and its top female star respectively, had a golden night on Sunday, winning three Grammy Awards each. Carlile showed her artistic range in the awards categories and on the national CBS broadcast from Los Angeles as the famous folk singer won Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song (over Ozzy Osbourne in both cases) for the blazing “Broken Horses.”

Nashville-based breakout solo artist Allison Russell finds herself in a good place going into the 2022 Grammy Awards with three nominations, including Americana Album of the Year. Outside Child was released in late May on Fantasy Records and received immediate acclaim for its insightful and healing reflections on horrible abuse she suffered in her youth. Its song “Nightflyer” has been tagged for two possible Grammys, as American Roots Song and American Roots Performance.

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