India gets its own music awards

Mumbai, June 30 (IANS) India is finally getting its very own music awards. The Indian Music Academy (IMA) has joined hands with Reliance Broadcast Network Ltd to create awards that will be a celebration of all music genres.

At an event that had panelists like Shivkumar Sharma, Jagjit Singh and Salim and Sulaiman Merchant among others, the creation of Big IMA Awards 2010 was announced.

'We have many awards in our country but no exclusive music awards that will honour musicians from all over the country. With this award, we aim to encourage our music industry,' Shivkumar Sharma told IANS.

'Musicians never get their due, honour and dignity in our country, but now they will. We should have had something like this long ago, but better late than never,' added Salim Merchant.

The nominees for these awards will be selected by a jury comprising stalwarts and respected musicians from the Indian music fraternity.

'The carefully selected representative jury will ensure that BIG Indian music academy awards will emerge as the singular and most rigorous recognition of world class quality of Indian music,' said IMA co-founder Durga Jasraj.

The awards, which will be presented in January 2011, are aimed at recognizing music talent from across all genres of Indian music ranging from Hindustani, Carnatic, Bollywood, pop, jazz, folk, ghazal, sufi, et al.