First Annual Oly Music Awards

By Gina C.

I met up with Jabi Shriki and China Star at Oldschool Pizzeria to talk about the Oly Music Awards (OMA). OMA is a new event created to showcase the awesomest bands/musicians that rock on in Olympia and give these guys and gals awards for being the raddest artists to ever have invaded our ears with their amazingness. Nothing like this has happened in Olympia before, so it’s due time we did something to pay recognition to our thriving music scene. If you haven’t heard about it already, well, it’s kind of a big deal…

“I came up with the idea [for OMA] in December, and it had its own momentum, As soon as I mentioned it to some people, they said, ‘Yeah, I want to be involved with that,’” says Jabi about the beginnings of OMA. This is obviously a huge undertaking, so he has a group of fantastic people helping him out with the ordeal, “A lot of people have been really helpful. John Manini is running the stage, and Audrey Henley has been doing a lot. We have a YouTube and TCTV guy, Jimbo Jitsu, and of course China and Morgan [Picton] have done some pre-award show promos. Sara Norwood is doing ticketing, and there are tasks for each individual person.”

China speaks up, “It’s a giant endeavor. This is a new event and everyone is just trying to have fun and honor these musicians and bring awareness to the artists that come from here.” Since this is a locally based event, the future of OMA largely depends on how the community gasps onto it.

Selecting the nominees and winners involved fans voting online through the OMA website as well as judges’ choosings. The initial fan-voting took place from February 10th to April 10th. These submissions and votes determined the selected performers for the two showcasings of OMA, as well as all of the nominees for all of the genres. After that, the judges choose their favorites of the highest rated fan picks, a process made unbiased by a generator that adds a band’s recording to an anonymous track labeled with a number where the judges could listen and choose their favorites without knowing who exactly the band/musician is. After these final nominations, from April 19th to May 1st, voting was open online to fans with the very final nominations to select the award winners. This leads us to two awards for each genre; Judges’ pick and Fan’s pick, meaning more awards and more winners! Pretty legit, right?

“How many votes were cast?” I’m curious about the numbers.

“2,227,” Jabi answers exactly. “And we screened for duplicate IP addresses and emails, so they were all unique votes. The solo performers are Justin Stang, Kendl Winter, AKA, Mothrider, and Andres Jones. And the bands are going to be The Blackberry Bushes, The Fabulous Downey Brothers, The Ethan Tucker Band, Radio8Ball, and Horsebodies.”

“Fans are welcome to send us ideas for awards or if they want to make something themselves, that would be great,” adds China about further fan participation. You can (and are encouraged to) contact Oly Music Awards through their website www.olymusicawards.com with any new ideas or questions about the OMA.