Cat Cardenas is a contributor to the Recording Academy.
Ela Taubert is a strong believer in signs, and in the run-up to winning Best New Artist at the 2024 Latin GRAMMYs, the Colombian singer was seeing them everywhere. Back home, she and her family had a tradition of making a wish at 11:11, and as the award ceremony drew nearer, the number kept leaping out at her — on…
Judith Sherman remembers winning her first GRAMMY Award in 1994 with something resembling disbelief. That year, inside New York’s Radio City Music Hall, Whitney Houston opened the Ceremony with "I Will Always Love You"; U2's Bono presented Frank Sinatra with a GRAMMY Legend Award, and Lifetime Achievement honoree Aretha Franklin sang "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman." "It…
In the fall of 2000, the Latin GRAMMY Awards made their television debut live on CBS, making history as the first prime-time bilingual broadcast to air on network TV. The ceremony arrived right on time: the "Latin Explosion" was just beginning, and everyone was taking notice. Marc Anthony had risen to No. 3 on Billboard’s Hot 100 with his smash…
Early in the spring of 2020, Angélica Garcia felt like she was being called back home. The singer/songwriter had spent the last three years in Richmond, Virginia, but her roots were firmly planted in California. She’d spent most of her life in El Monte — the city in the San Gabriel Valley just 20 20 minutes east of downtown L.A., where…
Singer/songwriter Gina Chavez has witnessed firsthand the ways music can build bridges. In 2017, the Austin-based artist was getting ready to perform on a stage more than seven thousand miles away in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Not long before, she hardly could've pointed to Uzbekistan on a map. Now, she was standing in historic Registan Square, framed by three centuries-old madrasahs (Isalmic…
