IMA institutes awards for non-film music

Indian music awards, not only for Bollywood music, but for different genres of Indian music—Carnatic, Sufi, Bhajans, Ghazals, folk, Qawalli, Indi pop, Indi rock and so on, as also for different instruments—is being organised by the Indian Music Academy (IMA). Each of the 39 categories will have a separate jury of three to four members.

An international auditing firm will audit for the awards. "We wanted it to be on par with international standards," said Durga Jasraj, co-founder, IMA.

After 20 nominations are selected in each category by the jury, a second one will zero them to five. The finalists will then be chosen by the two juries together. In total, a  panel of 27 judges has been roped in for the awards.

Some of them came together on October 27 to discuss  the awards and to make the process glitch-free. The judges assembled were Leslie Lewis, Luke Kenny, Pandit Ajay Pohankar, Uttam Singh, Kuldeep Singh and Sridhar Parthasarathy. Some of the suggestions  were that the participants’ names will not be disclosed at any point and that the judges of one category can listen to the music together so that there is no difference of environment. "The aim is to find good talent and make sure that it is a completely unbiased decision," said Pandit Arum Pohankar.

IMA has been organising a national music talent hunt to dig out talent in these different categories.