With the 2025 Juno Awards coming to Vancouver on March 30th, many people were speculating what’ll be some changes coming this year, however not many were expecting the Juno Awards to remove a total of 4 categories from the award show. Here are the unfortunate categories that are being cut.
The news came about when a letter was received by the Canadian Press, which had the organizers of the award show telling the committee to put an immediate “hiatus” on records that fall under Reggae, Children Albums, Christian/Gospel tracks and International Album of the year.
The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts stated that the decision to remove these categories was simply to be a part of “broader set of updates” which they have yet to announce as of this moment.
As you may have expected, the backlash that occurred from this decision is clear as day, with reports of some members from the reggae community contacting the Juno organizers to express frustration. You can even find a petition online trying to reinstate the reggae genre back into the Juno award show, created by Shana McCalla.
Shana also had this statement to share at the description of the petition:
“Since the early days of reggae, Jamaican artists have come to Canada, bringing with them the richness and vibrancy of reggae music. Despite their immense contributions to the music scene and Canadian culture, these pioneers were never given the acknowledgment they deserved.” – Shana McCalla, September 9th 2024
Do you think these categories should be reinstated into the Juno awards? personally I believe that keeping them gives the deserved acknowledgement these artists deserve. Removing cultural genres like Christian/Gospels and even international albums can really reduce the amount of awareness listeners may be looking for.
To show some respect, I decided to share you some of the previous winners of the prior Juno awards that held these categories!
one of the notable winners from the reggae record category is definitely Kirk Diamond himself, with his album “DREAD“, in collaboration with Finn, Kirk Diamond would be a 3 time Juno award winner.
K-Anthony
K-Anthony is the most recent winner for the Juno Awards Gospel category for his hit EP, “ARROW“. K-Anthony’s lyricism and love for the lord is inspiring and admirable, not to mention that mellow feeling with his music that gives you that sense of ascension and elevation.
With many people hoping to see these categories back into the Juno, it seems that may not be the case this coming year. What are your thoughts?