Hey guys, The Grammies are an award given out by the record INDUSTRY, not some aesthetic minded organization. Awards nearly always have more to do with how an album affected the Industry, rather than artistic merit. In this way they're not unlike the Oscars. The Oscars however, do have rules about who gets to vote in many of the comparatively esoteric categories. In the Grammies this MAY be the case for some of the technical awards, but for all of the awards to best artists and recordings in all categories, EVERY member of (I think it's) NARAS is eligible to vote. So, especially in categories like jazz and classical musics, with which a VERY small proportion of the voting members are familiar, awards tend to go to artists & recordings with VERY familiar names and have VERY little to do with the relative artistic merit of the nominees. You can, of course, complain all you want, but it's (perhaps even) more pointless than complaining about, say, the Oscar for best foreign-language film, for which the nomination process is SO screwed up that it's a miracle when half-way decent films are nominated, let alone winners, in the category. Bests, Herb