Lira (awards)

On October 15, 2010, the chairman of the National State Television and Radio Company of Belarus, Alexander Zimovsky, announced that the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Belarus had proposed the creation of the television contest “National Music Awards”. The awards were to be presented in the categories of “Best Song of the Year,” “Best Performer,” “Best Band,” “Opening of the Year,” and “For Contribution to the Development of Belarusian Pop Music.”^[1]

The Ministry of Culture also announced the prizes for the winners, "Best Song of the Year" would receive a cash prize of 95 basic units (Br 3,325,000; US$1,111) and a certificate for creating a music video. Both, the performer and songwriters are awarded in the nomination. In other categories with interactive voting, there were awards equalling 77 basic units (BU). The winner for "Best Belarusian-language Song of the Year" received a cash prize of 73 basic units (Br 2,555,000; $853), and other smaller prizes were also offered in other categories as well.

Songs written from December 2010 to November 2011 were accepted for consideration. The expert panel of judges included 100 people^[2] and the winners were all announced on December 13, 2011.^[3]

In the period from November 1 to November 21, 2013, applications were collected for the third National Musical Awards. Songs that were released between November 1, 2012, and October 31, 2013, were eligible for the awards. The award show itself took place on December 16 at the Palace of the Republic.

On October 30, 2014, the National Music Awards was renamed to The Lira (Belarusian: Ліра). The selection process began via the website for All-National TV.^[7] The site created a list of 65 songs that were eligible for voting. Among the 65 songs in the competition, 10 were in the Belarusian language.^[8] On January 31, 2015, at the Palace of the Republic, the annual awards were presented.

On October 27, 2016, after a one-year break (there were no awards presented in 2015), the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Belarus announced the start of selection for the Lira Awards. Songs released from January to December 2016 were accepted for consideration. The voting began on the All-National TV channel’s website with 6 nominations: “Best Song in Belarusian,” “Best Performer of the Year (Among Men),” “Best Performer of the Year (Among Women),” “Best Group,” “Best Song of the Year,” and “Best Music Video of the Year.” An expert panel selected the winners in 3 nominations, (“Best Songwriter”, “Best Lyricist”, and “Best Arranger”). The organizers of the competition determined the remaining winners with suggestions from the panel, in the remaining 3 categories, (“Opening of the Year”, “Style of the Year”, and “Ours Abroad”). On February 9, 2017, the awards were presented.

At the beginning of 2013, in his column on Charter 97, Źmicier Padbiarezski of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty lamented that the organizers of the awards in their nominations “do not notice” quite popular, but partially censored, artists in the country, such as Siarhei Mikhalok, Lavon Volski, or Alexander Kullinkovich.^[9] At the request of BelaPAN, he also revealed the vicious practice of the massive use of playbacks at concerts, while the agency's journalists themselves found the evidences of plagiarism in some songs of the performers.^[10]

In a number of op-eds over at naviny.by, singer Irina Vidova, winner of the People's Choice Award in 2011, agreed with criticism of the implementation of the award from a number of journalists, citing her examples of the organizers' negligence too, and emphasized the need for greater transparency in voting, pluralism in the process of nominating contestants and the forming of the composition of the jury, constancy in the rules of the competition, attracting specialists from alternative TV channels and the media to its organization, nevertheless concluding the significance and importance of the project on a national scale as a whole.^[11][12][13]

In 2013, Źmicier Biezkaravajny, founder of the music portal Experty.by, noted that the award show is “a big project that is shown on television” and “in which people get money [for winning]”. The critic also questioned the quality of the jury composition after an analysis of the 2012 ceremony^[14] and claimed that, coupled with other shortcomings, all cast doubt on the awards' national status.^[15]

He also confirmed the opinion of an interviewer that economic problems had reached the national stage with the cancellation of the “directive and artificial” ceremony in 2015, “If there is an order, some designated channel conducts it. If there is no order, no one does. This is an indicator of the level of professional relationships within the pop community of Belarus, its spoiledness by state attention. Neither the professional community, as in many countries, nor an initiative group stand behind the award. The Ministry of Culture should not get involved in such projects.”^[16]

In a review of all music awards of Belarus for 2013, Pavel Sverdlov, editor of KYKY.ORG, described the second ceremony as an act that “resembled the distribution of the USSR State Prizes” but “with the difference that, no representatives of the alternative music scene slipped in [among the nominees] though.”^[15]

In 2014, Alexandr Chernuho, editor of Ultra-music.com, following the coverage of three ceremonies, sharply negatively assessed the implementation of the awarding of music awards, “Year after year we have been watching colossal flaws, mistakes, and profanations: Larisa Gribaleva, who sits in the jury, receives the award for the best song of the year, Irina Dorofeeva is confused with Iskui Abalyan, Valeriy Dayneko’s playback cuts short, and it turns out that he does not know the lyrics of the song.” ^[17]

• "Уладальнікі Нацыянальнай музычнай прэміі". Беларускае тэлеграфнае агенцтва. 14 January 2011. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  • У Беларусі аб’яўленыя пераможцы Нацыянальнай музычнай прэміі // 13 сьнежня 2012 г.
  • Нацыянальная музычная прэмія ў галіне папулярнай музыкі Ліра» // 10 лютага 2017 г.
• Таццяна Матусевіч (31 January 2015). "Нацыянальная музычная прэмія "Ліра" назвала ляўрэатаў". Газэта Культура». Retrieved 22 December 2019.