Kendrick Lamar Wins 2018 Pulitzer in Music

https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2018/04/16/kendrick-lamar-just-won-pulitzer-for-damn/JFQKDvIgXl7TTuIhY8xbHP/story.html

This seems like a radical move. I haven't even heard the whole album, or the other finalists tbh, and don't have an opinion yet as to whether it is a good or bad move, but it seems as momentous to me as it probably was when Dylan won the Nobel. This has always been an 'art music' prize. A jazz artist didn't even win the prize until Wynton Marsalis won in 1997: http://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/225

My students are going to discuss the question of whether art music/popular music distinctions are still meaningful or valuable in the 21st century tomorrow; this seems like perfect timing.

It's even better that he won for this one and not the more jazz and funk-indebted previous album.

Deserved

Jury list

This year's Pulitzer music jurors, btw: violinist Regina Carter, Paul Cremo of the Met Opera commissioning program, Farah Jasmine Griffin (a Columbia prof of English, comp lit & African-American studies), critic David Hajdu & composer David Lang.

— Anastasia Tsioulcas (@anastasiat) April 16, 2018

It's even better that he won for this one and not the more jazz and funk-indebted previous album.

― Simon H., 16. april 2018 22:03 (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Eh, they always get the Pulitzer one symphony too late.

Ha, I had the same thought but then remembered Shaw's Partita.

Damn > TPAB for me so it wasn't a complaint

Couldn't care less about the Pulitzer one way or another but I'm happy for KL.

it's a fucking amazing album

Ha, I had the same thought but then remembered Shaw's Partita.

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), 16. april 2018 22:31 (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh, it's a pretty bad joke at this point, they've been giving them to quite a few young composers recently. And also Become Ocean was pretty spot on.

Yeah, although Canticles of the Holy Wind is actually my favourite JLA, I can't fault the committee for lacking clairvoyance. Julia Wolfe definitely should have won it for Steel Hammer instead of Anthracite Fields and Ornette and Reich both won decades too late.

Been meaning to check out more Julia Wolfe after a great performance of Lick from a local new music ensemble.

https://twitter.com/NewMusicDrama has been, uh, interesting reading in the wake of this, e.g.

GUYS HOLY SHIT THE MUSIC SCIENTIST HAS LOGGED IN AND DECLARED RAP OFFICIALLY NOT MUSIC CONVERSATION OVER pic.twitter.com/XbOs2BGu8P

— 🚨New Music Drama🚨 (@NewMusicDrama) April 16, 2018

I mean, even the stuffiest classical music group I follow probably has five people praising this for every one saying something that could get shared on NMD.

Anyway, I didn't really get it when I listened to DAMN. a few times. However, I also finally got around to listening to all of To Pimp a Butterfly - I had resisted the hype despite loving a lot of the people involved - and I really think this is great. Totally credible choice for a contemporary composition award.

he could've won a Pulitizer just for "FEAR" imo

cosign on DAMN > TPAB

not by much but

neck and neck for me, tough to say though bc they are pretty different

The one thing that slightly saddens me is that the Pulitzer has been a good guide to classical composers I wouldn't have discovered otherwise, so I don't really want this to happen every year. But it's a completely credible choice.

And that sadness would be exactly the same if they'd given a second Pulitzer to JLA for Canticles, so...

it's a pleasure to learn that classical composer types endorse racist pseudo-science popular in the Plessy era.

I don't think that unsourced post is representative of classical composer types.

Gives me hope that Autechre will win it next year

They're not American, though.

so their achievement will be all the more impressive

lol at that tweet talking about classical decoding the signs of nature and then saying rap doesn't because it triggers fight or flight reflexes.

was in SF last year when this came out and it was *everywhere* – in a way that isn't at all available in the UK, it was clearly a *social* album, so this award feels like a good call, with the pulitzer's wider context of journalism / social commentary.

Yeah, I mean, I'm glad that there is an award for composition that isn't primarily focused on 'social or popular significance', partly for the reason that Fred gave.

That award doesn't necessarily need to be the Pulitzer, though.

Yeah, the Pulitzer is just for all kinds of writing, no need to think social significance into it, that way you end up blocking Gravity's Rainbow from winning the literature award, just to mention one particularly embarrassing moment from the past. I also don't think you have to consider social relevance to think DAMN. and Kendrick Lamarr deserves the Pulitzer, and the other argument I've seen, that there are other musical awards more suited to hip-hop, is moot when the Grammys are having one of their most racist periods.

It's great! Even though Migos made the better album last year. And it does annoy me a bit that I can't find the list of finalists, so that I could check out the two other nominees. And dear God, I kinda fear what other hip-hop records an institution as boring as the Pulitzers might think deserves recognition... But next year it should obviously go to Beyoncé - Live at Coachella.

The other two finalists are listed in the second link from the OP: http://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/225

To Pimp a Butterfly > DAMN. easily, and I think DAMN. is excellent.

Man, Steve Reich's been nominated a lot.

I'm guessing they were waiting until the right time to award him retroactively for Music for 18 Musicians.

This is good -- an interview with the other two finalists, both of whom are Kendrick fans and are happy he won:
https://slate.com/culture/2018/04/pulitzer-finalists-michael-gilbertson-and-ted-hearne-on-kendrick-lamars-win.html

Imagine the scandal if they said otherwise.

Imagine if these guys were huge dumbasses!

I like KL and don't generally give a damn about North American classical music (with exceptions) but the self-congratulatory, universal expectation that we praise one of the last high-profile composition prizes for catering to the hegemony of pop music, in the broadest sense of the term, lest we come off as stuffy, elitist fucks is kind of irritating tbh. But I'm probably a stuffy, elitist fuck, so what do I know?

I mean, I can't imagine any serious reaction to this news except "oh, cool," but that doesn't exactly move the needle online

No, pomenitul, that's what I've been partly wrestling with too (except that I like American compositional music). Once we accepted four and a half minutes of silence into the art music canon, though, I'm not sure that there has been any compelling reason to keep pop music out.

There's no a priori reason, that's for sure. But we'd be kidding if ourselves if we said that compositional art music is fine and dandy at the moment. The optics oscillate between 'hey, it's cool that those composer types nobody listens to are so open-minded' and 'at long last, the Pulitzer committee is beginning to acknowledge that no one gives a fuck about classical and jazz to begin with'. Not to mention those four and a half minutes of silence weigh a lot more in the world of non-pop music, to say the least.

The room for discontent is made smaller by just how stuffy and backwards the Pulitzer historically has been. It's not just pop music that has been kept out, it's jazz, even minimalism. It's an American music canon not just without Beyoncé and Kanye West, but without Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Morton Feldman and John Cage. Giving it to Lamar feels of a piece with giving it to Caroline Shaw and Du Yun, and it just feels right. Something had to change. I mean, four of the seven women who have won the prize got it in the last nine years...

The Ted Hearns thing sounds quite interesting.

I'm also just thankful that it was Lamar who broke the barrier. Could have been so much worse. Reading about criticism, they were constantly saying musicals and movie scores should be eligible. Lamar is so much better as a winner than John Williams or Jonathan Larson.

I agree that the Pulitzer prize has generally been backwards, so I applaud the decision to include Kendrick Lamar purely on that level. But I harbour no illusion as to this pick's potential consequences on classical music's relative autonomy in the US. Although I don't think very highly of most of its past recipients, I'm not sure sidestepping even further towards pop music (in the broadest possible sense, once again) is the solution.

xp: totally with you on that, re: film music & musicals.

Will have more to say soonish but I just want to note as an aside that, interestingly, rock seems like it may be the one major American musical movement to have been completely passed over by the Pulitzers. Totally possible that no rock artists ever sent in an application.

Well, you had to send in a score until quite recently, so I don't think they could. Perhaps a prog-rock band did once, but yikes...

Huh, seems like something Zappa would/should have done. Do you know when the committee started accepting recordings? Was The Downward Spiral robbed?

Wikipedia says 2004

I've been writing grants, submitting apps
man I feel just like a rock star