Meet the Montrealers up for the Polaris Prize tonight
DJ, remix artist, producer Kaytranada, singer-songwriter Basia Bulat among 10 finalists for $50K prize
The Polaris Prize, created to honour the best Canadian album of the year, will be handed out tonight, and two Montrealers are in the running for the honour.
The winner will takes home a $50,000 grand prize. The other nine nominees will each receive $3,000.
Kaytranada, born Louis Kevin Célestin, is actually from Saint-Hubert (close enough!) on Montreal's South Shore.
He's nominated for his debut album 99.9%, which came out in May, but he's been releasing music for years.
i made this album in my momma's house and i still ended up on the short Polaris Prize list. Who would've thought?
—@KAYTRANADAHe first began to DJ when he was 14 and sees his music as a bridge between the dance world and the hip hop/R&B scene.
He was nominated for a Juno award this year but was later disqualified when it came to light that his song At All was released outside the eligibility period.
Basia Bulat
This is Bulat's third time on the short list. She was also nominated in 2008 for Oh, My Darling and in 2014 for Tall Tall Shadow.
She's up this time around for her 2016 album Good Advice, a collection of break-up songs that are deceptive in that they sound upbeat.
"It's an old trick, of course, that happy song that you don't realize is actually a sad song, but more and more it's the kind of thing that interests me," she said during an interview on q earlier this year.
The Polaris Music Prize is considered to be one of the most prestigious awards in Canada, because the jurors are all people in the music industry, including music critics, writers, radio hosts and music producers.
"It's voted on by people who listen to music all the time and not [awarded for] a particular genre or an amount of sales," says Katherine Duncan, the head of the jury for this year's Polaris Music Prize.
"It's based solely on artistic merit."
It's based solely on artistic merit.- Katherine Duncan, 2016 Polaris Music Prize jury head
Duncan, who is also a host and producer for CBC Music and CBC Radio 2, says the award can be a big boost to an artist's career.
She gives, as an example, Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq, who won the award in 2014.
"Basia Bulat – this is her third time on the short list, so maybe third time's a charm for her. Kaytranada – really, really interesting, up and coming, very young artist who is just 23 years old doing really interesting work. They both have lots of supporters on the jury, so we'll see what happens tonight," says Duncan.
If either of them win, Bulat or Kaytranada will join indie rock bands Arcade Fire (2011), Karkwa (2010) and singer-songwriter Patrick Watson (2007) as Montrealers who have taken home the prize.
The entire event will be live-streamed on the CBC Music page at 8 p.m. ET.