Grammy Award records
The record for the most Grammy Awards won in a lifetime is held by Georg Solti, a Hungarian-British conductor who conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for twenty-two years. He has won a total of 31 competitive Grammy Awards out of 74 nominations and was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996.
Racism in Grammy Awards
Others have argued that non-white artists mostly win in smaller "racialized" categories. Beyonce has 18 of her 22 within categories, such as rap and R&B, and only one of win in a major category. Anne Powers writing for the NPR accused the 2017 Grammys of systematic racism because Chance the Rapper and Beyonce were the only black artists who won televised awards. According to her there is a general notion that music made with “real” instrumentation is superior to synth or sampled music, or that “stand-still” performances are superior to performances that incorporate dance.
The voting process for the Grammy Awards is a particular process that has endured lots of criticism over the years. The voting committees are made up of 10,000 musicians, producers, engineers, songwriters, and essentially any professional in the music industry who qualifies based on the requirements. There is a yearly fee, but after that any voting member is qualified to make nominations and vote on several different categories. Controversy has been raised over the fact that members vote for works in categories outside of their expertise, and this occurs because they are required to vote on a certain number of categories to maintain membership. Rob Kenner, a Grammy screener, described an “unwritten rule” while conversing with committee members in which you must be cautious nominating an album by an already well-known artist if you do not want that album to eventually win an award because other voting members will mindlessly select a famous artist's album because they recognize the name, even if they have never heard any of that music before.