JUNO Awards logo 2020The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) has revealed the nominees for the 2020 JUNO Awards – including those for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year and Traditional Roots Album of the Year. The coveted awards will be presented on Sunday night, March 15 at SaskTel Centre in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Hosted by Canadian pop star Alessia Cara, a 23 year-old singer-songwriter who has been nominated for six awards this year, the ceremonies will be broadcast live on CBC beginning at 8 p.m. ET and may be viewed online at www.cbcmusic.com/junos or https://www.cbc.ca/music/junos.

In the running for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year are Coyote (Catherine MacLellan), Easy Keeper (Del Barber), Little Bones (Irish Mythen), Passages (Justin Rutledge), and Mohawk (Lee Harvey Osmond). Traditional Roots Album of the Year nominees include Once a Day (April Verch), By Appointment or Chance (Miranda Mulholland), Sketches (Natalie MacMaster), Sugar & Joy (The Dead South), and Assinbone & The Red (The Small Glories).

Nominees in other award categories that may be of interest to AcousticMusicScene.com readers include those for Indigenous Artist or Group of the Year and Blues Album of the Year. Nominated in the former category are Celeigh Cardinal for Stories from a Downtown Apartment, Digawolf for Yellowstone, nehiyawak for nipiy, Northern Haze for Siqinnaarut, and Riit for ataataga. In the running for Blues Album of the Year are Pocket Full of Nothing (Big Dave McLean), Mad Love (Dawn Tyler Watson), Hand Me Down Blues (Durham County Poets), That’s Where It’s At (Michael Jerome Browne), and The Northern South Vol. 2 (Whitehorse). In addition, Toothsayer by Tanya Tagaq is among the nominees for Instrumental Album of the Year; a throat singer and composer, Tagaq is a Polaris Music Prize recipient and Canadian Folk Music Award- winner.

A complete list of JUNO Awards nominees can be found, along with additional information, online at www.junoawards.ca.