2011 Black Weblog Awards Nominations Closing May 7

Just wanted to remind you loyal TransGriot readers that the 2011 edition of the Black Weblog Awards nomination process closes on May 7.

So if you haven't nominated your fave Black blogs such as Womanist Musings, TransGriot, Jack And Jill Politics, What Tami Said (just to name a few) better bust a move before May 7.   

We can't be in the process to win these awards if we aren't nominated first, and I'm shooting for a repeat of my 2010 win in the Best LGBT Blog category.

Here's the link to do so, and thanks for your support.

  

2011 Black Weblog Awards Nominations Open

It's nomination time for the 2011 Black Weblog Awards!   The process is getting started a little earlier than last year for these awards because they are going to have a live awards ceremony at this year's Blogging While Brown Conference taking place July 8-10 in Los Angeles, CA.

As you know TransGriot won the Judge's Category for Best LGBT Award over some stiff competition, and I want to see if I can make it back-to-back wins this year.

The nominations period opens today and runs through May 7.    The voting will commence on May 17 and run through June 17 with the winners being announced in the live ceremony for the first time in BWA history on July 9.

As to why the BWA's exist?   It started in 2005 because Black blogs often get overlooked and ignored in other online Internet award events.   To date, the Black Weblog Awards has recognized nearly 180 blogs in over 30 categories. The Awards have been featured in several mainstream and online media outlets, including NPR, CNN, and others. Winners of the Black Weblog Awards have also gone on to appear in other media outlets such as MSNBC, the Huffington Post, BET, and many others. 


On that note, time to get the nominations in for a few blogs that I know are worthy of BWA consideration, and like last year, it TransGriot is named one of the finalists, i will keep you loyal readers posted.

Esperanza Spalding Wins Grammy-Justin Bieber Fans Lose Minds

There were a lot of upsets in last night's 53rd annual Grammy Award ceremony, but one of the surprise winners was 26 year old jazz instrumentalist and singer Esperanza Spalding in the Best New Artist category.

The Portland, OR born musician graduated from Berklee College of Music in 2005.  She was immediately hired by the institution as an instructor, becoming at age 20 one of the youngest instructors in the institution's history.

I became aware of her last year when she performed at the BET Honors show done for His Royal Badness when she sang his hit 'If I Was Your Girlfriend.' .

She also performed at the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony and concert.   She was chosen by President Obama himself as part of the tradition of having one artist chosen by the Nobel laureate to perform in the Oslo concert. 

So with this pedigree, was very pleased to see a musician get rewarded with a Grammy, and was more than a little pissed to hear how the Justin Bieber fans threw a temper tantrum after she deservedly won that category.


Spalding's Wikipedia page was defaced after her Grammy win.   Misstatements and taunts were added to the site and then quickly removed. After a sentence noting her victory, for example, a user added the statement, "Justin Bieber deserved it go die in a hole. Who the heck are you anyway?"

In other places, the singer's middle name was changed to both "Justin" and "Quesadilla" and her Grammy win was written up with the addendum, "Even though no one has ever heard of her! Yay!" At the end of her biography, one user wrote, "Biber 4 Lyfe."

Grow up you bigoted juvenile delinquents.   When Justin Bieber can say he toured with Patti Austin, performed on PBS' Austin City Limits, graduated from Berklee College of Music, and is 1/100th of the musician that Spalding is, then I might begin to care about his career.

Until then, stop hatin' and listen to some real music for a change.

Congratulations Sandy

I've posted a video from Baltimore's Sandy Rawls back in November with her vocalizing her thoughts about building a better trans community.  I've had the pleasure and the opportunity to IM chat with her and trade e-mail with her since then and hope to have her doing one of my Ten Questions interviews in the near future.

I'm looking forward to finally meeting her one of these days as well the next time my travels take me to her East Coast neck of the woods.

I wanted to take a moment to congratulate Sandy on picking up a James Baldwin Award earlier this month for her work on behalf of the rainbow community in the Baltimore area.

Congratulations Sandy!   Thank you for everything you do and being another one of the leaders our trans people can look up to and draw strength from.

Congratulations Kylar!

Congratulations to one of the people I look up to in this community, Kylar Broadus.

He recently received at the just concluded Creating Change Conference in Minneapolis the Susan J Hyde Activism Award for Longevity in the Movement at their closing plenary session.

Way to go Kylar!    He has been working hard to make things happen positively for our community for years, and it's nice to see good people get recognized for what they do for us.