Music industry prepares to name best of 2003

Andris Straumanis | 

For Latvia’s music industry, February will close out with a couple of big bangs. Eirodziesma 2004, the competition that will choose Latvia’s representative to this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Turkey, is scheduled Feb. 28 in Ventspils. But before that event, the year’s best recordings will be honored in a Feb. 21 ceremony in Rīga that may hold special meaning for some Latvians abroad.

The “Latvijas mūzikas ierakstu Gada Balva” honors are sponsored by the Latvian Music Producers Association (LaMPA). Like other awards, such as the Grammys in the United States or the Brit Awards in the United Kingdom, the Gada Balva honors recording artists across several categories.

All the major recording companies in Latvia—Baltic Records Group, Mikrofona ieraksti, Platforma Records and UPE Recording Co.—are represented this year, as are a few smaller labels. The largest company, Mikrofona ieraksti or MICREC, has the most nominations, 26 across the 18 awards categories. Platforma is second with 17 nominations, while Baltic Records and UPE each have 14 nominations.

The Gada Balva doesn’t name an overall “album of the year,” but selects the best songs or albums in various categories in three divisions: major nominations, regular nominations and special awards.

In the major nominations division, the best songs and albums will be named in the genres of rock, modern rock, pop, dance music, hip-hop, and schlager or country.

The hip-hop category may be of special interest to Latvians in the United States. The Chicago-born rapper Delete, who started his career in Detroit, is nominated twice in the best hip-hop song category. One nomination is for “I Gotta Hold On” which he performs with the singer Erica Jennings on his album You’re Not Alone (released by Platforma), and the other is for his collaboration on “Tu vēl esi dzīvs,” performed with Pamatinstinks, Ray, KRF and Flip M.

However, the categories that will receive most attention undoubtedly will be those that name the best rock and best pop songs and albums. And those could be toss-ups. Nominated for best rock album, for example, are Prāta Vētra for A Day Before Tomorrow, Dzelzs vilks for Ļauj man tevi…, Fomins & Kleins for Muzikants (which includes the title track that was the only song in Latvian in last year’s Eirodziesma contest), the pagan-metal band Skyforger for Pērkoņkalve, and alt-rockers Z-Scars for Starp tevi un mani. While it may be very likely that Prāta Vētra adds another award to its résumé, it would be fun—if not a bit shocking—to honor Skyforger.

In the best pop album category, I’m cheering for Ainars Mielavs and Dzīvais porcelāns. Like previous Mielavs albums, it takes some getting used to, but offers listeners a number of well-crafted songs that sound as fragile as the album’s title. Mielavs is up against four other nominations, including the self-titled album from the new group Cosmos (released by Mielavs’ company, UPE Recording).

In the regular nominations division, the awards include best contemporary folk music album, best academic music album, best instrumental, film or theatre music album; best children’s music album, and best music video.

I’m confident Kaza kāpa debesīs, the latest UPE release from the post-folk group Iļģi, will win the contemporary folk music album award. It’s just a great album by a consistenty great group. But the independently released Gonam gona by Laimas muzykanti (released by Izteiksme) as well as Extravagance, the second album by the Aigars Grāvers-led RamaDance project (released by Platforma) could also be in the running. However, the latter really shouldn’t be in this category. Perhaps it’s time for LaMPA to create an “electronica” or “other” category.

The academic music category is worth watching if you’re a fan of Andrejs Jansons and the New York Latvian Concert Choir. Their recording of the musical Lolitas brīnumputns (which included participation by the Latvian National Opera) is one of five nominated in the category. The album is up against two recordings by the ever-popular Latvian Radio Choir, a recording of the final concert of the 23rd Latvian Song Festival (released by Baltic Records), and Naktstauriņi by Raimonds Pauls (released by MICREC).

Finally, among the special awards to watch is debut of the year. Nominees include Bardo Splash for Bordo, Cosmos for Cosmos, Dzintars Čīča for Nāc un dziedi, Nicol for Melns un balts and Z-Scars for Starp tevi un mani. Although all these new artists are deserving of support from consumers and the record business, Bardo Splash sounds to me to be the most refreshing.

Delete

A song from American-born rapper Delete’s album You’re Not Alone is nominated in this year’s Gada Balva contest.

Andris Straumanis is a special correspondent for and a co-founder of Latvians Online. From 2000–2012 he was editor of the website.

Freshman from Rīga breaks track record

Andris Straumanis | 

Dmītrijs Milkevičs, a 22-year-old freshman from Rīga, broke University of Nebraska and Big 12 conference records in the 600-yard run Feb. 14 in Lincoln, Neb.—the first time he’s competed in the event.

Milkevičs, who told the campus newspaper Daily Nebraskan that the run in the Adidas Classic “was just for practice,” ran the event in 1:08.67, breaking the previous Huskers record of 1:09.17 set in 1986.

Formerly a student at Rīga Technical University and the University of Latvia, Milkevičs is classed as a middle-distance runner, according to Huskers.com, the official Web site of Univeristy of Nebraska sports. His main event is the 800-meter run.

The Huskers are looking for big results from the runner in the upcoming Big 12 conference track-and-field indoor championships meet, set Feb. 27-28 in Lincoln.

Milkevičs came to Nebraska with a record of success in Latvia and Europe, including being Latvia’s 400-meter dash champion in 2001 and 2002.

Andris Straumanis is a special correspondent for and a co-founder of Latvians Online. From 2000–2012 he was editor of the website.

Survey suggests opportunities for our future

Arnis Gross | 

Recently I agreed to complete an online survey about an innovative online product that was about to be launched to the marketplace. The 40 questions took about 10 minutes to complete. By the end of it I was feeling frustrated because nowhere in the survey did I have the chance to express what I believed was very important for the planned service. The online survey was very mechanical, as surveys tend to be, and simply did not cater for general user comments and feedback. Was the survey successful? It all depends upon the original purpose of the survey.

The purpose of our recent Latvians Online Survey 2003 was to get your feedback on what is and isn’t working and to confirm that Latvians Online is travelling in the right direction. One thing that we had learnt from our 2001 survey was to significantly reduce the number of questions, from about 100 down to 10 questions. The reasons were twofold. First, most online users today are time-poor and will not even attempt to begin what might seem to be a 10-15 minute exercise. Some may argue differently as this time represents only a small percentage they spend on Latvians Online. The other reason is that we ourselves experienced significant data-overload from the last survey. It resulted in a mammoth task in collating and cross-referencing the data and it wasn’t always clear how we could make best use of this information.

In this survey, besides collecting the usual demographic data (age, gender, country of residence, Latvian language ability) and getting a tally of which sections are most favoured, we decided to focus our analysis on the two open-ended questions: “How can we further improve Latvians Online?” and “Any other comments or feedback?”

Although the survey was not scientific, we were able to pick out common threads and clearly categorise answers into areas that required more attention. In all, we received responses from 567 readers.

The results overwhelmingly show that Latvians Online is a service that continues to grow from your referrals. Nearly 70 percent of respondents have found out about Latvians Online through a friend or relative. Google remains the top search engine and we marvel how often it sends its Googlebot (search robot) to dig for new content on latviansonline.com. Yahoo! and the other popular search engines are a distant second.

Our most popular sections are News (26 percent), Latvian Links (17 percent), Columns (14 percent), Reviews (11 percent) and the Online Store (10 percent), sending a clear message that we should continue to focus on the content that so many readers seem to enjoy.

Not surprisingly, the issue of language occasionally popped up. Although we do carry some articles in Latvian, most of the Web site is in English, consistent with our motto of “Bringing Latvians together worldwide” or “Katram latvietiem pasaulē.”

Our readship is mainly aged between 31 and 65+, the largest group 46-65 (45 percent) being the baby-boomers, the smallest group (10 percent) the under 30s in whom we hold much promise as we see a resurgence of Latvian youth activities worldwide.

The Latvians Online Update e-mail newsletter is sent out to more than 11,000 readers worldwide in more than 50 countries including the United States and Canada (80 percent of subscribers), Australia (15 percent), the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden and most other European countries. We even have friends in Japan, China, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Iceland and South Africa. Our latest Web site statistics for December 2003 is at an impressive average of 2,400 visitors per day or nearly 75,000 visits (25,000 unique visitors) for the month.

We are very grateful that so many of you took the time to express your opinions as well as suggest future improvements for Latvians Online. Your feedback from the Latvians Online Survey 2003 has allowed us to set some clear goals for 2004 and beyond. Many exciting new ideas have been raised. Just how much can be achieved will depend upon available resources in time, human effort and finances, the three main factors that control any project. We would love to hear from volunteers who would like to help and become a part of the worldwide Latvians Online community.