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Grammy Award for Best Folk Album

Honor awarded to recording folk artists

Summary

Honor awarded to recording folk artists

Field	Value
name	Grammy Award for Best Folk Album
awarded_for	quality vocal or instrumental folk music albums
presenter	National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences
country	United States
year	2012
holder	Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Woodland (2025)
website	grammy.com

The Grammy Award for Best Folk Album is an award presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards, to recording artists for releasing albums in the folk genre. Honors in several categories are presented at the ceremony annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to "honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position".

According to the 54th Grammy Awards guideline the Best Folk Album category includes authentic folk material in both traditional vocal and instrumental styles, as well as contemporary material by artists who use traditional folk elements, sounds and instrumental techniques as the basis for their recordings. Folk music is primarily but not exclusively acoustic, often using contemporary arrangements with production and sensibilities distinctly different from a pop approach.

This award - established in 2012 - combines the previously used categories for Best Contemporary Folk Album and Traditional Folk Album. The Recording Academy decided to create this new category for 2012 upon stating there were "challenges in distinguishing between... Contemporary and Traditional Folk".

Like most album categories, the performing artist (of greater than 50% of playing time on the album) receives a nomination. The actual Grammy is awarded to the performing artist, the producer and the engineer/mixer.

The inaugural recipients of the award were The Civil Wars, who won in 2012 for their album Barton Hollow. To date, Chris Thile, Gillian Welch, and David Rawlings have won this award twice each; the latter two act as the current recipients of the award for Woodland at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards.

Recipients

[[The Civil Wars]] are the inaugural winners of the award.

Husband and wife [[Béla Fleck]] and [[Abigail Washburn]] won the award in 2016.

Musical partners and two-time winners [[David Rawlings]] and [[Gillian Welch]].

2022 winner and four-time nominee [[Rhiannon Giddens]].

Year	Winners	Work	Nominees	Ref.
2021
2022	2023	2024	2025	2026
The Civil Wars	Barton Hollow	{{smalldiv
Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer & Chris Thile	The Goat Rodeo Sessions	{{smalldiv
Guy Clark	My Favorite Picture of You	{{smalldiv
Old Crow Medicine Show	Remedy	{{smalldiv
Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn	Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn	{{smalldiv
Sarah Jarosz	Undercurrent	{{smalldiv
Aimee Mann	Mental Illness	{{smalldiv
Punch Brothers	All Ashore	{{smalldiv
Patty Griffin	Patty Griffin	{{smalldiv
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings	All the Good Times	{{smalldiv
Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi	They're Calling Me Home	{{smalldiv
Madison Cunningham	Revealer
Joni Mitchell	At Newport (Live)
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings	Woodland
Winner TBA on 1 February 2026

Each year is linked to the article about the Grammy Awards held that year.

Artists with multiple wins

;2 wins ;* Chris Thile (one as a member of the Punch Brothers) ;*Gillian Welch ;*David Rawlings

Artists with multiple nominations

;4 nominations ;* Rhiannon Giddens (one as a member The Carolina Chocolate Drops) 3 nominations

Sarah Jarosz
Chris Thile (one as a member of the Punch Brothers)
Gillian Welch ;2 nominations
Judy Collins
Madison Cunningham
Dom Flemons (one as a member of The Carolina Chocolate Drops)
Patty Griffin
Laura Marling
Aoife O'Donovan
Punch Brothers
Joy Williams (one as a member of The Civil Wars)

References

"Grammy Awards at a Glance". Los Angeles Times.
"Overview". [[National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences]].
(March 2017). "Category Mapper". [[National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences]] }}{{dead link.
"Explanation For Category Restructuring". [[National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences]].
(November 30, 2011). "2011 – 54th Annual GRAMMY Awards Nominees And Winners: American Roots Field". [[Recording Academy.
[http://www.grammy.com/nominees List of 2013 nominees] {{webarchive. link. (February 1, 2012)
"56th GRAMMY Awards: Full Winners List".
"List of Nominees 2015".
"Grammy Awards 2016: See the Full Winners List".
"59th Annual GRAMMY Awards Winners & Nominees". GRAMMY.com.
Lynch, Joe. (November 28, 2017). "Grammys 2018: See the Complete List of Nominees".
[https://www.grammy.com/grammys/awards/61st-annual-grammy-awards Grammy.com, 7 December 2018] {{Webarchive. link. (December 7, 2018)
(2019-11-20). "Grammy Awards Nominations: The Complete List".
"2021 Nominations List".
(2021-11-23). "2022 GRAMMYs Awards: Complete Nominations List".
"2023 GRAMMY Nominations: See The Complete Nominees List".
"2024 GRAMMY Nominations: See The Full Nominees List {{!}} GRAMMY.com".
"2025 GRAMMYs: See The OFFICIAL Full Nominations List {{!}} GRAMMY.com".
"2026 GRAMMYS: See The Full Nominations List {{!}} GRAMMY.com".

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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