Philadelphia rolls a ‘7’ in Las Vegas – 2022 Grammys edition.
When all is said and done as it comes to the 2022 award season, Philly is high and away on the top of the heap. Forgetting (please) the debacle of last week’s Oscars, Sunday night’s 2022 Grammys – held post-pandemically, indoors and outdoors, in Las Vegas – were a chill affair filled with the camaraderie of musicians, producers, and tech-heads just pleased to be in each other’s companies, live and in person, sans masks and social distancing.
To that goal of the social, no one deserved to win more than the overly confident Sound of Philadelphia-by-proxy duo of Silk Sonic (Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars) for both “Song of the Year” and “Record of the Year.” Called what it is by Paak during the ceremony,“a clean sweep”,Silk Sonic set the tone for the evening: that winning is everything and that everyone in that room was a winner. They even more so.
Along with presenting awards, seeing Questlove at the 2022 Grammys – a winner for Best Music Film for his debut directorial doc, Summer of Soul – was the unfettered, uninterrupted victory lap that he couldn’t share with fans and friends at the Oscars. He did, however, get to allude to the fact that he has another Grammy in his house, the one split between The Roots, Jill Scott and Erykah Badu for “You Got Me.”
Questlove’s fellow High School for Performing Arts Philadelphian, bassist and composer Christian McBride won a Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album Grammy for his Big Band’s “For Jimmy, Wes and Oliver” and Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and The Philadelphia Orchestra’s recording of Florence Price’s First and Third Symphonies was awarded the Grammy for “Best Orchestral Performance” With producer Dima Lipay, the album celebrates the work of Price, the first Black woman composer to have a symphonic work premiered by a major American orchestra and, somehow, also marks the first ever Grammy win for The Philadelphia Orchestra.
This leaves Jazmine Sullivan, the victor for Best R&B Album for “Heaux Tales.” Along with shouting out her parents and this city where she remains its most devoted citizen, Sullivan talked about living through her 20s to become the woman she is today, the agency she required and thanked the Black women whose stories she told – those hurt, bruised, battered but victorious – throughout “Heaux Tales.” This was the win I was hoping for the most. If nothing else, Philly came out on top when it came to its R&B legend.
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