BVMI axes Echo Jazz prize too

Germany’s Federal Music Industry Association (BVMI) has scrapped the upcoming Echo Jazz awards, amid continuing fall-out from the antisemitism controversy that marred this year’s main Echo prize.

The Echo Music Prize – the German recording industry’s highest accolade, equivalent to the Grammys or Brits – was cancelled after this year’s ceremony, following worldwide criticism of the jury’s decision to hand the 2018 award for best hip-hop/urban album to rappers Farid Bang and Kollegah for 2017’s Jung, brutal, gutaussehend 3. The album includes a song, ‘0815’, where the two rap about their bodies being “more defined than Auschwitz prisoners,” while another line says they’re planning “another Holocaust, coming with a molotov”.

Germany’s Echo Awards axed amid antisemitism row

At the time, BVMI said sister prizes Echo Klassik and Echo Jazz would likely go ahead as planned. However, Deutsche Welle reports the association has now taken the decision to similarly cancel the jazz awards, which “will not take place” on 31 May.

“In view of the forthcoming repositioning of the German music awards, the organisers have deemed it appropriate to call off this year’s ceremony and instead focus entirely on a positive new beginning for the [Echo group of] wards,” organisers say in a statement. “The jazz prize recipients, who were chosen last March by the Echo Jazz jury, will be given their awards in person if so desired.”

The Echo Jazz 2018 winners are Ambrose Akinmusire, Bamesreiter Schwartz Orchestra, Hanno Busch, Ron Carter, Scott DuBois, Kinga Głyk, Sebastian Gramss, Charlotte Greve, Wolfgang Haffner, Norah Jones, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Omer Klein Trio Parisien, Peirani, Schaerer and Wollny, Michel Portal, Céline Rudolph, Antonio Sanchez, Andreas Schaerer and Hildegard Lernt Fliegen/Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy, Sebastian Sternal, Markus Stockhausen, Chris Thile, Baptiste Trotignon and Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960.

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