Grammy Category for Sacred Music Sought

A Huntington Beach producer of Catholic sacred music has asked the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which sponsors the Grammy awards, to create a category for recordings of sacred and liturgical music.

If Deborah Traylor’s proposal wins a category slot, musicians from the Catholic Church and other Christian churches may find themselves at the Grammy awards next year, waiting with anticipation for “the envelope please” beside the likes of Paul Simon and Bonnie Raitt.

Traylor decided to propose the category to the 20-member awards committee after discovering that her company’s 12 entries of contemporary and ancient liturgical music, including a Gregorian chant, had been placed in gospel and classical categories.

That meant that a chant from a monastic community in Taize, France, was competing for nomination with Sir Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, while contemporary liturgical composer Marty Haugen was up against the sounds of The Mighty Clouds of Joy, a group of gospel singers.

“We didn’t know where to enter the albums,” said Traylor. “We said we needed a sacred category, and they said gospel is the category.

“But it’s like comparing apples and oranges.”

Putting Taize in the classical category did not work, she said, because Taize music--newly composed chants based on ancient church music--does not fit the academy’s definition of classical, which is “performances of serious historical composers.”

Traylor runs PHD Productions, which produces and distributes Catholic sacred and liturgical recordings. The company markets its recordings in secular record shops, and she said they are selling well.

If Traylor’s request is granted, it would be the first category in the academy’s 34-year history to include performances of ancient church music.

The academy’s Awards and Nomination Committee will meet this month to decide which of last year’s 80 categories will be continued and to determine what categories should be created for next year’s awards. The committee represents the academy’s voting body of 7,000 artists, record producers and executives.

PHD entered the recordings in the Grammy competition after offering them for the first time in the secular market at 11 Los Angeles-area Tower Records stores last October. Tower’s product manager George Scarlett and the chain’s classical recording buyers were impressed and report increasing demand for the music.

“It’s doing very well,” said Richard McFalls, classical manager of the Tower store in Torrance. “It’s something I’d like to keep in the stores.”

“People have been hearing and singing this music every week for years,” said Alec Harris of the Gregorian Institute of America in Chicago, a Catholic music publishing house. “These composers are used widely and are some of the most popular composers in the country. Having a category in the Grammys would give recognition to a form of music millions participate in.”