George Clinton's decades-long, funky-as-hell impact on music is inescapable. From his sprawling '70s funk records with the Parliament (which eventually evolved into the Parliament-Funkadelic) to his collaborations with Prince, Kendrick Lamar, Flying Lotus and many more, to his oft-sampled groovy beats, it's hard to imagine music without Clinton and his funky crew.

At the 2019 GRAMMY Salute To Music Legends, George Clinton & the Parliament-Funkadelic were celebrated with the Recording Academy's high honor, the Lifetime Achievement Award.

"This part of the funk is just beginning," Clinton said backstage at the event, reflecting on his music's impact. "The funk that we did in the '60s and '70s has evolved into the '80s and '90s with the hip-hop generation and jazz, and it's gonna be here a long time."

During the show, members of the funk family, including Clinton and Bootsy Collins, filled the stage with an infectious energy and several of their hits, including "One Nation Under A Groove." They may have been the last honorees and performance during the event, but they still got everyone dancing.

Clinton & the Parliament-Funkadelic were part of a handful of artists presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award during this year's show. Black Sabbath, Donny Hathaway, Billy Eckstine, Donny Hathaway, Julio Iglesias, Sam & Dave and Dionne Warwick are the other 2019 recipients.

In addition to the Lifetime Achievement Award artists, the Trustees Awards, given to Lou Adler, Nickolas Ashford & Valerie Simpson, and Johnny Mandel this year, celebrated exemplary contributors to music, outside of performance. Additionally, the Technical GRAMMY Award was presented (posthumously) to API Audio Co-Founder Saul Walker, and Florida high school choir director Jeffery Redding was celebrated with the Music Educator Award.

Don't forget to tune into GRAMMY Salute To Music Legends on Oct. 18 at 9 p.m. ET on PBS (check your local listings) to catch the groove.

George Clinton On Louie Vega, Snoop Dogg, Thundercat & More

The 2024 South By Southwest Festival got off to a dramatic start: approximately 80 artists, speakers, and event sponsors pulled out of the event to protest the sponsorship of the U.S. Army and defense companies and then a hit-and-run traffic incident in a crowded festival area resulted in a fatality and serious injury early Tuesday.

SXSW spokespeople issued statements about both. They were "saddened" by the tragic traffic incident, and reiterated that they are an organization that welcomes diverse viewpoints and therefore saw no issue in allowing the military sponsorships. They also did not criticize anyone who pulled out of the festival to show solidarity with Palestine and protest genocide. Republican Texas Governor Ron Abbott was not as diplomatic.

And yet the music portion of the festival pushed on. 

Some of the bands who pulled out of the festival performed "unofficial" shows, and as with previous SXSW festivals, the diversity of music offerings was staggering: artists played genres such as folk, pop, indie rock, psychedelic cumbia, punk, electronic, and Americana, but also offered regional lenses to musical styles — Texas rap, Southern California soul-jazz  — and social justice viewpoints like indigenous hardcore. Artists also offered global perspectives on jazz, hip hop, and psychedelic funk.

Read on for TK of the most inspiring and exciting moments from SXSW 2024 – from performances by legends to groundbreaking new acts.

The Black Keys Take Audiences Behind The Scenes (And Back To Their Salad Days)

Music keynote offerings felt slim compared to previous years, but festival goers did get an authentic, revealing glimpse into the world of the Black Keys — there to promote a new documentary film about their band history and to perform two shows. 

Drummer Patrick Carney stole the show with humorous, deadpan anecdotes —including that time he slept in the van to guard the $500 they made at a show and woke up in the middle of the night to a crowd of drunk people dressed like Santa Claus in the middle of July — and self-effacing jokes about himself and the group: "The first time we came to SXSW we couldn’t afford to stay in town." 

One thing the film makes clear is that two key elements of the Black Keys are simplicity and technology. They kept things simple by being a two-piece band: a few bass players auditioned early on but Carney and Dan Auerbach preferred the sound of drums and guitar. But the key element was Carney’s four-track recorder: he taught himself how to use it, which enabled the band to record themselves in Carney’s basement and fine-tune their nuanced approach to rock music.

 "We wanted the kick drum to sound like the speakers were blown," Carney said in an interview. 

Carney and guitarist/singer Auerbach later performed a blues-driven sold-out show at Austin’s Mohawk, joined by artists on Auerbach’s Nashville-based record label Easy Eye Sound. There was no banter, just music.

Bootsy Collins Brings The Funk & A Lot Of Flair

Legendary funk bassist, singer, and producer Bootsy Collins — who played with James Brown and Parliament-Funkadelic, boasts a long solo career, and collaborated with artists like Deee-Lite, Fatboy Slim, Silk Sonic,  Kali Uchis and Tyler, the Creator — hosted high-energy shows with the Ohio group Zapp and his entourage of collaborators and proteges at the 2024 festival. 

A long line of people snaked down Austin’s busy Red River Street waiting to get into the packed Mohawk club for a March 15 show, which featured guest artists Henry Invisible, Tony “Young James Brown” Wilson, and FANTAAZMA. A few fans wore big hats and star-shaped sunglasses to emulate Collins’ distinct look.

Collins, who announced in 2019 he wouldn’t play bass in live performance anymore, was in town to promote his anti-violence initiative, "Funk Not Fight," and a new song and album of the same name. He also promoted his Bootzilla Productions company and Funk University, which aims to mentor younger creatives like Hamburg-based FANTAAZMA, who joined Collins for a SXSW Studio interview with TikTok creator Juju Green.

“At some point James Brown saw something in me, you know, and grabbed us in, and I’ll never forget that, and so that’s what I try to do,” Collins said about his efforts to help mentor younger artists. 

Omar Rodríguez-López & Cedric Bixler-Zavala Get Weird

What a journey these two have had: they met as teens in the hardcore scene in El Paso, Texas, formed two influential alternative rock bands — At The Drive-In and The Mars Volta — and one obscure dub project — De Facto — that earned them rock and roll acclaim from the music press and respect from musical peers in bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. 

Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird, a new documentary about the creative partnership between Rodríguez-López and Bixler-Zavala, premiered  at the 2024 festival. The film illuminates the duo’s struggles with bandmates, addiction, racism, Scientology, and their ups and downs in the music industry. 

Rodríguez-López recorded loads of footage over the years of them on the road, in recording studios, and in live performance. Those intimate, up-close moments used in the film reveal a partnership that begins in solidarity, drifts apart, and comes back together stronger than when they started. It’s essentially a film about friendship.

The two appeared briefly onstage before the film’s screening, alongside director Nicolas Jack Davies, but said nothing. For the first time in 21 years, the two performed at this year’s SXSW festival as De Facto, their lesser-known reggae-influenced side project, to promote the new film.

Cumbia Is The Real Soundtrack To SXSW 2024

Cumbia in 2024 is conscious party music, still closely linked to its Colombian origins but expanded and modernized by elements of psychedelia and the young players from across the country and the world interpreting the genre. 

Cumbia could be heard throughout the festival, in particular at a heavily attended party March 12 at Hotel Vegas in Austin, which featured more than 10 bands on four stages. A few fans could be seen wearing T-shirts with the phrase “Cumbia is the new punk,” the title of a song by Mexican cumbia fusion group Son Rompe Pera. 

Bands mostly from Texas — including the “barrio big band” Bombasta and Latin psych bands like Combo Cósmico and Money Chicha —  and the rock-influenced Denver band Ritmo Cascabel played dance music driven by hand percussion, heavy bass lines and guitars drenched in reverb.

Earlier this year, Billboard predicted that cumbia music in all its entirety and subgenres — chicha, sonidera, norteña, villera — would see a massive growth in 2024, citing higher-profile artist collaborations and social media viral hits.

Classical Music Unveils Its Changing Profile

Classical music is most often associated with beautiful concert halls and polite, well-dressed audiences who sit quietly as music is being played. This was not the case for Vulva Voce, an all-female Manchester-based string quartet that played their unique blend of modern classical music at various SXSW stages this year. 

Band members wore one-piece jumpsuit coveralls with Doc Martin boots and performed mostly original, high-energy, uptempo compositions to loud crowds at dive bars throughout Austin. They shredded strings and swayed and bounced onstage as if it were a rock show, and said they loved every minute of it.  Vulva Voce also performed live with Ash, a Northern Irish rock band whose career in music spans 30 years.

Vulva Voce’s modern approach to classical music comes at a good time. Mid-week, a group of classical music artist managers, lawyers and classical music label executives spoke about classical music’s revival in gaming and soundtracks. 

Traditional classical music performance continues to struggle with attendance, but the genre has gained traction on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, and has seen a surge in interest in film scores, Netflix soundtracks, video games, and sports broadcasts. 

More than 340 new bands played SXSW for the first time this year. Each year, SXSW awards three emerging artists The Grulke Prize, in honor of festival Creative Director Brent Grulke, who passed away in 2012. Sabrina Teitelbaum, who performs as Blondshell, won for developing U.S. act, the South Korean alternative K-pop band Balming Tiger won for developing non-U.S. act, and British psychedelic pop band the Zombies won the career act award

Creed's Scott Stapp On New Solo Album 'Higher Power,' Processing Decades Of Jokes & Being "A Child With No Filter"

. 

South By Southwest lures more than 250,000 people to Austin each year to learn about a range of topics, including education, the cannabis industry, technology, film, and video gaming, but music is the heart and driving force of SXSW. The festival kicks off March 8, and a dizzying array of musical performances brings the festival to life from March 11 to 16.

The festival has grown exponentially since its inception in 1987 as a showcase for mostly unknown alternative acts. Roughly 2,000 musical artists will perform on more than 100 stages spread out across Austin and the possibilities for discovery feel endless.

SXSW can generate much buzz and help launch careers: Odd Future, the hip-hop/R&B collective that provided the springboard for Tyler, the Creator and Frank Ocean, played just a few short sets there in 2011, and Diddy declared them the future of rap music. HAIM, Janelle Monáe, John Mayer, M.I.A., and countless others have had significant early-career moments at SXSW. And legacy artists like New Order and RZA also come to the festival each year to share their wisdom in interviews and perform new material.

As the 2024 festival kicks off, check out some of the emerging and legacy artists appearing at SXSW, including a multiple GRAMMY-winning garage duo, an all-female post-punk group from Los Angeles that embraces "nihilism and loneliness," a modern Texas cumbia collective, an '80s light rock icon, a funk pioneer, modern funk innovators, Glasgow '90s post-rock, and more.

The Black Keys

The Black Keys helped usher in the garage rock revival of the early 2000s on just two instruments: drums and guitar. Their stripped-down sound, originally just made up of "old blues rip-offs and words made up on the spot" in Akron, Ohio, eventually grew to become a well-crafted, major-label rock sound that landed them in arenas and earned more than two dozen award nominations and multiple GRAMMY wins. They’ve released 11 studio albums.

The duo will perform at the 2024 festival in support of a new documentary, This Is A Film About The Black Keys, that traces their trajectory from jamming in basements to major-label rock band. Rolling Stone Senior Writer Angie Martoccio will interview members Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney in a keynote event.

Automatic

Since the release of their 2019 debut album, Signal, the gloomy post-punk band Automatic has toured the U.S. and abroad, composed the soundtrack for Hedi Slimane’s 2020 Paris Fashion Week show for Céline, and opened for legendary post-punks Bauhaus ( drummer Lola Dompé is a daughter of the English goth rock band’s drummer Kevin Haskins).

The band’s three members — Dompé, Izzy Glaudini, and Halle Saxon-Gaines — draw inspiration from krautrock, dub reggae, and the off-kilter, moody atmosphere of films by auteurs like David Lynch. Their live performances are uptempo and melancholy at the same time, and have shared stages with Parquet Courts, Tame Impala, and Thee Osees. Automatic  once described their music as "fixated on the intersection between ’70s underground culture and the ’80s mainstream, ‘That fleeting moment when what was once cool quickly turned and became mainstream, all for the sake of consumerism.’"

Mogwai

When the Glasgow-based rock band released their first single in 1996, they were anxious to replace the '90s Britpop of well-known UK bands like Oasis and Blur with something a bit more emotional and dark: lengthy guitar-based instrumental pieces full of distortion and heavy effects that offered dynamic contrast and melodic bass guitar lines. 

They’ve since gone on to embrace electronica and instrumental music, and over the years has provided music for multiple film soundtracks. Their basic song formula typically begins with something low-key that grows into something gentle and melodic, and then pushes toward louder, layered driving rock. 

"Calling it ‘art’ would be a pretentious step too far, but it’s certainly something that feels exciting and different to most other pop," one British newspaper wrote. A new documentary from Antony Crook, If The Stars Had A Sound, which follows the independent Scottish band’s trajectory, will premiere at SXSW 2024. 

El Combo Oscuro

Modern-day interpretations of cumbia — a percussion-heavy genre of Latin American music originated in Colombia — have become more widespread in recent years, with some calling cumbia "the new punk" for a young generation of rockers who are politically engaged but want to have a good time.

On organ, guitars, bass, drums, and conga drums, El Combo Oscuro sounds modern and retro at the same time, by weaving together an "impenetrable wall of psychedelic Cumbia and Latin sounds" that "throws neon Tex-Mex tribalism," according to the Austin Chronicle. 

Almost immediately after forming in 2020 in Austin, El Combo Oscuro were nominated for an Austin Music Awards’ Best Latin Act, and their debut EP, Que Sonido Tan Rico, was No. 15 on the Austin Chronicle’s Top 100 Records of 2021. A second EP, 2022's Cumbia Capital, further showcased the sound of Texas. Their 2024 SXSW performance will also feature songs from their latest release, a 2023 debut full-length titled La Danza de las Sirenas.

Bootsy Collins

In addition to showcasing thousands of emerging acts, SXSW each year also honors legacy artists who continue to write, produce, and perform music. Bassist Bootsy Collins — who played with James Brown and Parliament-Funkadelic throughout the late '60s and '70s and, in recent years, has collaborated with Kali Uchis and Tyler, the Creator — will perform with the group Zapp. 

The performance is part of Bootsy's own anti-violence initiative, "Funk Not Fight," which includes a Cleveland-based (Collins is from Ohio) anti-violence hub designed to offer music recording and mentorship to local youth. During a free performance on March 15, Collins will release a new song and album of the same name. 

Collins’ previous album was 2021’s Nobody’s Perfect Experience. The GRAMMY-winning bassist was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 with other members of Parliament-Funkadelic. Collins played on some of James Brown’s best-known and most political records – "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine" and "Superbad" – and also had a hand in pop hits like Deee-Lite’s "Groove Is in the Heart" and Fatboy Slim’s "Weapon of Choice."

At 72 years old, Collins shows no signs of giving up the funk. "Funk just brings people together, from the ground up," he told the Guardian. "It doesn’t have nothing to do with color. It has nothing to do with status. It just brings you to ‘the one’, and the one thing that we all have in common is that we all just want to live. That’s what it’s really all about. It’s making something from nothing, like me." 

John Oates

John Oats is one half of five-time GRAMMY-nominated pop-soul duo Hall & Oates. Twenty-nine of their 33 singles charted on Billboard’s Hot 100 between 1974 and 1991, and six of those songs — like "I Can’t Go For That" and "Private Eyes" — peaked at No. 1 . The two were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 and their music has been sampled by artists like 2 Chainz.

Oates, 75, has released five studio albums as a solo artist and published a memoir in 2017 titled Change of Seasons.

"I made a move to Nashville in the late '90s, early 2000s. The move, and the musicians and people I surrounded myself with, allowed me to rediscover the musician that I was before I met Daryl Hall," Oates told GRAMMY.com. "Because I was a blues, folk, rootsy musician, and I tapped back into my earliest influences.

At SXSW 2024, Oates will discuss fame, fortune, and managing a hit music career. His talk will be moderated by Alex Heiche, CEO & Founder of Sound Royalties. Coincidentally, Oates has been in the middle of a legal battle with his former songwriting partner. 

Slick Rick

When asked about hip-hop icon Slick Rick, Roots drummer and Tonight Show bandleader Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson told Rolling Stone, "Slick Rick's voice was the most beautiful thing to happen to hip-hop culture. Rick is full of punchlines, wit, melody, cool cadence, confidence and style. He is the blueprint." 

Slick Rick "The Ruler" — largely considered the most sampled hip-hop artist in history — launched his career performing with Doug E. Fresh’s Get Fresh Crew in the mid-80s, and his 1988 breakout solo album reached number one on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop chart. Slick Rick has recently collaborated with Soul Rebels Brass Band. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2023 GRAMMYs, to honor his legacy as a masterful storyteller and pioneering melodic rapper who raps in a British accent with a leisurely cadence and an unforgettably nasal voice that sometimes swerves into cartoony vocal tones. 

In recent years, Slick Rick has collaborated with Missy Elliott, Mos Def, and the Black Eyed Peas. He performed a duet with Mariah Carey at Radio City Music Hall in 2019, and was signed to actor Idris Alba’s record label. He will perform an all-ages showcase performance — badge-required — at The Mohawk on March 12.  

BALTHVS 

Funk music in recent years has taken on a more global sound, incorporating elements of Asian and Middle Eastern music, surf rock, reggae, and cumbia, thanks to bands like Khruangbin and BALTHVS, a Colombian psychedelic funk trio that has toured the world and released three full-length albums since forming in 2019. The band aims to make "cosmic music" that can combat anger and anxiety.

Band members Balthazar Aguirre (guitar), Johanna Mercuriana (bass), and Santiago Lizcano (drums) produce, mix, and master all of their music and design all of their artwork. Their most recently release, Third Vibration, incorporates funk, disco, dream pop, vaporwave, soul, and R&B into their songs.

Aguirre hypes those genres and more on his Cubensis Records YouTube page, where subscribers can better understand the BALTHVS universe by exploring a vast library of eclectic music, like the mystical 1968 Gabor Szabo album "Dreams," or Stefano Torossi’s 1974 Italian jazz fusion album "Feelings." For super fans, it’s a giant rabbit hole of discovery that helps illustrate the band’s musical recipe.

Brainstory

Brainstory is another modern funk outfit with an eclectic musical blueprint: the three members of Brainstory grew up in the Inland Empire area outside Los Angeles, and by the mid-2010s, they were developing a version of California retro soul music that combines jazz and funk with psychedelic rock and 70s R&B. 

"That's what we were all into at the time—jazz," says guitarist and singer Kevin Martin, who happens to be a big Bob Dylan fan. "And that's what we wanted to do with our first EP in 2014—take our songs and expand them, improvise, weld jazz onto them. We wanted to trick people into listening to jazz, basically." 

The band, made up of Kevin, his brother Tony Martin, and Eric Hagstrom, has released one full-length album, an instrumental album, and an EP. Their new record, Sounds Good, produced for Big Crown Records by Leon Michels — who recently collaborated with Black Thought of the Roots — drops on April 19. The band is touring this spring. Previously they’ve performed with soul singer Lady Wray, and singer Claire "Clairo" Cottrill has a guest feature on the new album.

Vulva Voce

SXSW is more associated with rock music than classical, but the UK-based, all-female string quartet Vulva Voce has applied a rock attitude to their ensemble. Formed during Covid lockdown, they compose much of their own music — which combines elements of folk, jazz, contemporary, and experimental music.

"In terms of our identity — and especially in terms of our business model — we treat ourselves like a band rather than a classical string quartet," violist Nadia Eskandari said. 

Vulva Voce also employ a bit of a punk attitude, performing outside classical concert halls, at open mic nights and pop-up performances. They also play a wide range of music written by female composers.

"We want all the music we play to feel accessible to anyone, because when you are playing music by women, it is even more important that anyone can connect to it, not just classical audiences,"  Eskandari adds.

Artists Who Are Going On Tour In 2024: The Rolling Stones, Drake, Olivia Rodrigo & More

Rapper/producer Erick The Architect is no stranger to reinvention. 

The Brooklyn-bred MC cut his teeth over alt-East Coast beats as Erick Arc Elliot before forming psychedelic rap trio Flatbush Zombies with childhood friends Meechy Darko and Zombie Juice. But after multiple mixtapes and two albums with the group, Erick is returning to solo form and venturing into new creative ground. 

Following 2021’s Future Proof EP, Erick is embarking on new musical travels with the release of his official debut album, I’ve Never Been Here Before. Out Feb. 23, the double album explores Erick’s flowy instrumentation, poeticism, and artistry at full scale. The project is fueled by singles "Shook Up" featuring FARR and Joey Bada$$, "Ezekiel’s Wheel" with funk forefather George Clinton, and the breezy "Instincts" with Westside Boogie.

Erick says I’ve Never Been Here Before is more than a collection of catchy introspections, melodic monologues, and '90s-inspired jams. It’s the shedding of one persona — and sound — and the beginning of a new: the Mandevillain. 

"This album is an identity of a new person," Erick the Architect tells GRAMMY.com, noting that the moniker is an ode to his father’s hometown of Mandeville, Jamaica. "A lot of people may have thought there was a ceiling to what I’m capable of, but I think this album will showcase a brand new artist and identity, which is really hard to do when people think they already know you. But I really think this is unique." 

The switch isn’t just in name — he’s taken on a new approach to music, too. For the first time in years, Erick says he’s prioritizing himself and his specific musical world. "It’s the first time I have created with the headspace that I’m free," he says. "I find that other artists don’t listen to other people’s music when they’re in a creative space, but this is the most locked off I’ve been from things."

As much as I’ve Never Been Here Before signals new creative ground for Erick to fertilize, it also represents his collective efforts to limit distractions and break free of any barriers — personally and sonically. 

While it was difficult to stay so focused and inward-looking while creating his debut album, turning to some of his legendary collaborators provided some clarity. After having conversations with James Blake, George Clinton, and other artists as part of the project, Erick no longer feels forced to fit a mold or address outside criticism. 

"This album is about sacrifice, and I’ve Never Been Here Before is me being okay with losing things," he says. "I think that losing has always a negative connotation because nobody wants to lose, everybody wants to win. But it's the first time I'm losing stuff and it’s better being lost. Whether it's a habit or a person in your life, you don't need to hold everything."

I’ve Never Been Here Before lives up to its title in both theme and creation. Where Erick previously wrote songs in moments of vulnerability, the rapper says he "doesn’t feel that way anymore." 

Citing the work of Keith Haring, Miles Davis and Pablo Picasso as inspiration, Erick says he was driven to write more high-spirited songs, rather than ones tethered to struggle and hardship. As a result, the album is more accessible than some of his previous work.

"I’m tired of writing from a perspective of just being like, 'I’m sad today, bro,'" he says. "I haven’t made a project that I feel like you can just put that joint on and just play it, don’t even think about anything else because it’s commanding an energy that we all need." 

In transforming the project, the "Die 4 U" artist pieced together a blend of new and older songs he recorded five years ago. And while a double album is a "death sentence" in the eyes of most rap fans, Erick says he’s prepared for both heaps of praise and hurls of "he’s overrated" from listeners. He would feel more anxiety only if the music never came out.

"I’ve always believed that I had another special part of me that I think people didn’t witness because I didn’t put it out in the forefront," he says.

While getting a new release across the finish line can be a heavy weight to bear, Erick says he’s determined to prove his doubters wrong and own his legitimacy as a solo act. "I didn’t get lucky or sneak in here and steal beats from somebody’s laptop," Erick says. "This project is great to defeat people who have perceptions about me that are incorrect."

With the momentum of I’ve Never Been Here Before, Erick is set to test his new music and moniker on the road during his upcoming Mandevillain Tour, which kicks off in Austin on March 25.

Now that he’s fulfilling his ambitions as a solo act, the artist has a few more mediums he plans to explore – TV and film. After being a rapper/producer for more than a decade, Erick says he’s ready to take grander creative leaps.  "I’m just trying to take this to the highest caliber," he says.

Benny The Butcher Is Ready To Rise On 'Everybody Can’t Go'

This year, the Special Merit Awards ceremony was not for the faint of heart. 

The 2024 GRAMMY Week event, held Saturday at a capacity Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles, presented Lifetime Achievement Awards, Trustees Awards, the Technical GRAMMY,  and the Music Educator Award to a dazzling gallery of musical innovators whose work has generated deep emotional connections across decades. In a world currently ensnared in a pattern of global conflict, the presentation of the award for Best Song for Social Change for the first time at the Special Merit Award ceremony this year added an extra layer of poignancy.

The presentation was touching from the very beginning, with a video montage of previous winners set to the historic recording of Aretha Franklin singing the Puccini aria "Nessuna Dorma." Glimpses of many legendary faces and performances on the screen underscored the Academy’s empathy for impactful music history: from Marvin Gaye to Janis Joplin; Billie Holiday to The Carter Family; The Beatles and Tina Turner to Dolly Parton and The Supremes.

The 2024 Music Educator Award was then given to Annie Ray, a music teacher and orchestra leader from Annandale, Virginia selected for her relentless positivity and inclusive energy. "Orchestra is much more than a class — it’s a family," said one of her students during a brief video chronicling her work. Ray, whose classrooms include students from 66 different countries — put together, they speak 59 languages — was visibly touched as she received the award. "I am thankful to share with the world what my students have taught me," she said.

The year’s Technical GRAMMY belonged to Tom Scott and the late Tom Kobayashi, who met at Lucasfilm’s Skywalker Sound in 1985 and together launched the Entertainment Digital Network (EDnet), which allows the sharing of high-quality video and audio. An estimated 250,000 musical collaborations have been facilitated by their innovations, including many GRAMMY performances. 

Next up were the three Trustee Awards: British pop legend Peter Asher, member of Peter & Gordon, prolific A&R executive, producer, manager, and a self-professed "admirer and member of the Recording Academy for almost 60 years"; legendary entertainment attorney and former Recording Academy Chairman Joel Katz, known as "the dealmaker who thinks outside of the box"; and Jamaican American DJ Kool Herc, renowned as one of the founders of East Coast hip-hop in ‘70s. He received the award joined by his sister Cindy who promoted his initial series of parties in the Bronx, noted for his groundbreaking use of two turntables and the extension of funky breaks in songs. 

It was time to honor the Lifetime Achievement recipients, and a sprightly Laurie Anderson stepped onstage and gave a witty assessment of her reputation as an uncompromising song alchemist. "They say my music is experimental, which sounds like doing something in the lab that might explode," she said. From her wonderfully robotic, left-field 1982 hit "O Superman" to her poetic concept album Homeland in 2010, Anderson has created her share of aesthetically explosive works of the art-pop and avant-garde variety.

"I love music so much, and I married a musician," she said acknowledging her husband, the late Lou Reed. "Wouldn’t it be great if there was a piano on every corner?"

The best-selling female gospel group in history, Detroit-based The Clark Sisters are known for their soaring vocal harmonies and powerhouse hits like "You Brought The Sunshine." 

"We thank our Lord and Savior for allowing us to do what we do: singing," they said, adding words of gratitude for their mother — "the lady who paved the way" — the late choral director Dr. Mattie Moss Clark.

The importance of a rich spiritual life was also emphasized by Motown legend and Soul empress Gladys Knight. The singer known for classic hits such as "Midnight Train to Georgia" and a raucous rendition of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" beamed onstage as she recalled her beginnings in music, before she became an international star with The Pips. "We had to go to church every Sunday, and it did make a difference," she said. "Everybody was singing around me when I grew up. And my mom would never allow me to do it easy. It had to come from the heart."

It was time to witness the strength of street knowledge. Delving into the very core of hip-hop identity, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony presented the Lifetime Achievement Award to N.W.A, the revolutionary Los Angeles collective that transformed the landscape of popular music with its 1988 debut Straight Outta Compton. The group was joined by the mother and son of late rapper Eazy-E, who passed away in 1995 at age 30. The surviving members of the group – excepting Dr. Dre, who was celebrating his daughter’s birthday and sent a text greeting – looked vindicated. "We always knew that a GRAMMY was not in the cards for us, but we still wanted to express ourselves," said Ice Cube. "When you do your thing, the world will come to you."

Donna Summer, the ethereal and visionary singer who took disco music into progressive territory during the ‘70s, passed away in 2012. The "I Feel Love" star received a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award on Saturday — and her husband Bruce Sudano and their three daughters were there to collect it. "Her voice and music are omnipresent in the [cultural] zeitgeist," said Sudano. "Donna continues to inspire people worldwide. She always referred to herself as an ordinary girl."

Last but not least, GRAMMY winning country star Tammy Wynette, who died in 1998, was also honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award — accepted by her daughters, Georgette Jones and Jackie Daly.

"Mom would feel very humbled to be in such a talented group of people," Jones said. "She always thought that the GRAMMYs were the biggest accomplishment in music. And she never fully understood her own impact."

When rapper and singer K’naan was a child in Mogadishu, his mother managed to get the family out of Somalia on the last commercial flight before the civil war erupted. Together with songwriters Gerald Eaton and Steve McEwan, K’naan was honored with the Best Song for Social Change award for "Refugee," a track about the plight of political refugees around the world.

"In the Somali language, the word 'home' derives from the word 'mother,'" explained K’naan as he received the award to a standing ovation. "I dedicate this GRAMMY to my home — my mother."

2024 GRAMMY Nominations: See The Full Winners & Nominees List