What the industrial revolution did for textiles, the era of communication has done for music. And, like it or not, MTV has done a lot to promote music in the digital age.
On Wednesday, mtvU, the college branch of MTV, will host its annual Woodie Awards, which will air on Dec. 4 at 10 p.m. on MTV, MTV2, mtvU, and Palladia. The question is, in an age of predictable award shows, why bother watching? The problem with award ceremonies, of course, is that they are seldom news: awards simply confirm viewers’ suspicions that a particular artist may be great. In order for a show to be worth watching, it must offer something fresh, and the Woodie Awards do a good job at this.
Executive producer of the show, Eric Conte, said, “It’s a chance to listen to some fantastic music and hopefully see a performance that you would never see anywhere else and get exposed to new kinds of music that you may not have heard.”
Performers this year include Passion Pit, Death Cab for Cutie, The Dead Weather, Clipse, and Matt & Kim.
The winners are selected by popular vote of college students. Although some nominees are seasoned musicians like Green Day, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Death Cab for Cutie, the majority are new artists on the brink of stardom.
Fresh nominees such as Phoenix, La Roux, and Matt & Kim currently find themselves in exactly this transition period. An honor from MTV could push their careers to rock star status.
Whether fame and fortune are beneficial to the future of their music is unimportant. The fact is that viewers are being served a silver platter of good, new music that hasn’t yet been played to exhaustion.
One of the hidden treasures of the Woodies is the Left Field Woodie, which includes artists that defy any sort of proper characterization. The nominees this year feature Amanda Blank, Major Lazer, Jay Reatard, Tech N9ne, and Janelle Monae, who was the opening act for Of Montreal a few weeks ago.
Other interesting categories are Breaking Woodie, Performing Woodie, and College Radio Woodie. For this last award, the ceremony functions as a musical grassroots operation, honoring the true origins of where music begins to spread: the college radio station.
The award show’s title is a play on the Recording Industry Association of America’s record sale certifications. “The Woodie Awards celebrate artists who have gone wood,” Conte said, “meaning, you don’t just don’t have to sell a ton of records to make good music and to get appreciated by your core audience.”
Some of these artists don’t even have official music videos yet, and if they do, there’s often a homemade feel to them, as is the case of Matt & Kim, whose video “Lessons Learned” features the artists streaking through Times Square.
Whenever popularity warps the content of any art form, it also keeps new art coming. The Woodie Awards may be one of the few instances in which music is presented—not pushed—to its audience.
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