AGA KHAN MUSIC AWARDS
NOMINATIONS FOR 2023-2025 CYCLE
The Aga Khan Music Awards
The Aga Khan Music Awards were established by His Highness the Aga Khan in 2018. The Awards recognise and support exceptional creativity, promise, and enterprise in music performance, creation, education, preservation and revitalisation in societies across the world in which Muslims have a significant presence.
The first Music Awards ceremony took place in Lisbon, Portugal in March 2019, and was co-hosted by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Lisbon Municipality. The second ceremony took place in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman, in November 2022, at the Royal Opera House Muscat. Both ceremonies brought together a constellation of the world's leading musical talents from the Muslim world.
Award recipients share a prize fund of USD $500,000, as well as opportunities for professional development. These opportunities include commissions for the creation of new works, contracts for recordings and artist management, support for pilot education initiatives, and technical or curatorial consultancies for music archiving, preservation, and dissemination projects.
The Awards focus on the constellation of devotional music and poetry, indigenous classical music, traditional folk music, and tradition-inspired contemporary music that has flourished in cultures shaped by Islam.
Besides recognising and supporting exceptional talent, the Awards aim to strengthen tolerance and pluralism around the world by promoting musical genres and styles that embody music's traditional role as a source of spiritual enlightenment, moral inspiration, and social cohesion.
Award recipients share a prize fund of USD $500,000, as well as opportunities for professional development. These opportunities include commissions for the creation of new works, contracts for recordings and artist management, support for pilot education initiatives, and technical or curatorial consultancies for music archiving, preservation, and dissemination projects.
The Awards focus on the constellation of devotional music and poetry, indigenous classical music, traditional folk music, and tradition-inspired contemporary music that has flourished in cultures shaped by Islam.
Besides recognising and supporting exceptional talent, the Awards aim to strengthen tolerance and pluralism around the world by promoting musical genres and styles that embody music's traditional role as a source of spiritual enlightenment, moral inspiration, and social cohesion.
Nominees should have accomplished one or more of the following, in each case, in a manner relevant to societies in which Muslims have a significant presence:
- Demonstrated exceptional artistic achievement and promise through the creation of a musical work or body of work (which may be in the form of recordings video, film).
- Achieved a high standard of excellence in a music-related social or humanistic endeavour (education; preservation, documentation and dissemination; research and scholarship).
- Achieved distinction as a performer or composer/improviser-performer.
- Made significant contributions to the development, sustainability, and availability of music or musical institutions.
Individuals, collectives, ensembles and groups, as well as initiatives, institutions and organisations are eligible to be nominated.