By Louis Chan, AsAmNews National Correspondent
It was a huge night for Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander musicians at the Grammys in Las Vegas Sunday night with at least 10 coming home with trophies.
The headlines went to both Silk Sonic with four Grammy wins and Olivia Rodrigo with three.
The team of Bruno Mars and Anderson Paak won all four categories The Recording Academy nominated them for Leave the Door Open-record of the year, song of the year, R&B song of the year, and R&B performance. The duo shared the honor for R&B performance with Jazmine Sullivan for Pick Up Your Feeling.
Mars is Filipino American on his mother’s side and Puerto Rican on his father’s side and Paak is Korean American and African American. The two set the tone for the night with the opening performance.
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The pair literally danced their way onto the stage when announced for song of the year and again for record of the year.
“Because of you guys, we’re going to be singing this song for the rest of our lives,” proclaimed Mars.
“We are really trying hard to remain humble,” said Paak. “But in the industry, it’s what you call a clean sweep.”
The night’s second performance went to Olivia Rodrigo who performed Drivers License. She went into the night with seven nominations and took home three awards for best new artist, best pop vocal album, and best pop solo performance.
She dedicated her best pop vocal album award to her parents.
“When I was 9 years old, I told my mom I was going to be an Olympic gymnast even though I could barely do a cartwheel. The next week when I told her I was going to win a Grammy, she was very supportive. I want to thank my mom for being supportive of all my pipe dreams no matter how crazy.”
Her mother is of German descent. Her father is Filipino American.
Producer Joseph Patel, an Indian American, won for best music film for Summer of Love with Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, David Dinerstein, and Robert Ryvolent. Unlike the Oscars, when Chris Rock didn’t read his name and referred to Patel, Sinerstein, and Ryvolent as “four White guys(apparently he can’t count), this time Patel’s name was called.
Another Indian American, Falu, won for her children’s album, A Colorful World. On Instagram she wrote I have no words to describe today’s magic. What an honor to…take home a statue on behalf of all the incredible people who worked on A Colorful World. We are humbled and thank the Recording Academy for this tremendous recognition. ❤️ THANK YOU!.” Falu is her stage name. Her birth name is Falguni Shah
Other Asian American winners including H.E.R. for traditional R&B performance for Fight for You; Yo Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax for classical music/small ensemble package for Hope Amid Tears from Bethoven Cello Sonatas; Mike Shinoda for remixed recording; Jennifer Koh for classical instrumental solo ; and Kalana Pe’a for Regional Roots Music.
Asian Australian Mitch Wong won for Believe for It in the category of contemporary Christian music performance along with Dean Hill and Jheng Han Li and Yu Wei from Taiwan won for best recording package.
AsAmNews did its best to reflect all the Asian winners in this article, but its possible we could have missed some. Let us know if we did.
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