Godspeed You! Black Emperor vinnare av Polaris Music Prize – avfärdar galan och skänker prispengarna

Godspeed You! Black Emperor kritiserar galan och skänker de $30 000 i prispengar till program för fångar i Quebec.

Montrealbaserade Godspeed You! Black Emperor tog under gårdagen hem Polaris Music Prize, ett årligt pris som går till den kanadensiska artist som enligt den röstande panelen gjort årets bästa album, oavsett genre. Postrockbandet släppte under förra året sitt första album på ett decennium med ’Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! och vann över konkurrenter som Metric, METZ och Purity Ring.

Hela grejen är smått ironisk: att ge ut ett pris till ett band vars politik och åsikter vänder sig kraftigt emot dessa typer av evenemang. Därför var det knappast förvånande att se Godspeed You! Black Emperor snabbt formulera ett svar på skivbolaget Constellation Records hemsida. Är det någonting jag beundrar det här bandet för – utöver deras flera otroliga album då – är det att de aldrig någonsin kompromissar. Deras långsamma upplopp mot Kanadas regering dör aldrig ut och de kostar till och med på sig att bjuda på lite självinsikt.

Dessutom skänker bandet prispengarna på $30 000 till projekt involverande att sätta upp ett program för att fångar i Quebec ska få tillgång till musikinstrument om de behöver dem. Läs GY!BEs svar, deras ställföreträdares tacktal och ögna igenom de övriga nominerade nedan.

”A FEW WORDS REGARDING THIS POLARIS PRIZE THING

hello kanada.
hello kanadian music-writers.

thanks for the nomination thanks for the prize- it feels nice to be acknowledged by the Troubled Motherland when we so often feel orphaned here. and much respect for all y’all who write about local bands, who blow that horn loudly- because that trumpeting is crucial and necessary and important.

and much respect to the freelancers especially, because freelancing is a hard fucking gig, and almost all of us are freelancers now, right? falling and scrambling and hustling through these difficult times?

so yes, we are grateful, and yes we are humble and we are shy to complain when we’ve been acknowledged thusly- BUT HOLY SHIT AND HOLY COW- we’ve been plowing our field on the margins of weird culture for almost 20 years now, and “this scene is pretty cool but what it really fucking needs is an awards show” is not a thought that’s ever crossed our minds.

3 quick bullet-points that almost anybody could agree on maybe=

-holding a gala during a time of austerity and normalized decline is a weird thing to do.

-organizing a gala just so musicians can compete against each other for a novelty-sized cheque doesn’t serve the cause of righteous music at all.

-asking the toyota motor company to help cover the tab for that gala, during a summer where the melting northern ice caps are live-streaming on the internet, IS FUCKING INSANE, and comes across as tone-deaf to the current horrifying malaise.

these are hard times for everybody. and musicians’ blues are pretty low on the list of things in need of urgent correction BUT AND BUT if the point of this prize and party is acknowledging music-labor performed in the name of something other than quick money, well then maybe the next celebration should happen in a cruddier hall, without the corporate banners and culture overlords. and maybe a party thusly is long overdue- it would be truly nice to enjoy that hang, somewhere sometime where the point wasn’t just lazy money patting itself on the back.

give the money to the kids let ‘em put on their own goddamn parties, give the money to the olds and let them try to write opuses in spite of, but let the muchmusic videostars fight it out in the inconsequential middle, without gov’t. culture-money in their pockets.

us we’re gonna use the money to try to set up a program so that prisoners in quebec have musical instruments if they need them…

amen and amen.

apologies for being such bores,
we love you so much / our country is fucked,
xoxoxox
godspeed you! black emperor” (via Constellation Records)

Bandets skivbolagsboss Ian Llavsky närvarade under prisutdelningen och tog emot priset i deras frånvaro. Hans tacktal löd som följer:

“I have know the band for almost 20 years — they’ve been at it for almost 20 years — and I do know that they want to strongly and unequivocally thank everybody involved in the voting and judging process of Polaris: writers, critics, bloggers, promoters, programmers, radio DJs, and music-makers, label people, industry people, who care about independent music and who think that independent music still has a promise to do something in terms of its choices and its structures and its methods that is counter to the mainstream, not only in the kind of music that we all support, but in the ways that we go about bringing it to people, how we bring it to the marketplace and so forth.

“So any of you that know about Godspeed know the choices that they have mostly made and have remained relatively silent about. So Godspeed thanks those people that keep caring about music and writing about it and championing it on those terms and hope that that continues to be part of the conversation and the cultural consciousness we’re all trying to build, by being committed and devoted to independent music, and independent means of production.“ (via Exclaim)

Alla de nominerade:

Godspeed You! Black Emperor – ‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!
Zaki Ibrahim – Every Opposite
Metric – Synthetica
METZ – METZ
Purity Ring – Shrines
Colin Stetson – New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light
Tegan And Sara – Heartthrob
A Tribe Called Red – Nation II Nation
Whitehorse – The Fate Of The World Depends On This Kiss
Young Galaxy – Ultramarine