> Scottish Alternative Music Awards - SNACK: Music, film, arts and culture magazine for Scotland

Scottish Alternative Music Awards

"SAMA have long championed what might at times over the years been considered niche genres."

Diaries ready! Who’s ready for a massive night celebrating the best of Scottish music from 2023? Friday December 1st sees the return of the Scottish Alternative Music Awards (SAMA), back for a, frankly impressive, 14th edition. The awards will once again be hosted at Glasgow’s Saint Luke’s by the inimitable Jim Gellatly and Leyla Josephine.

On the night, there will be special showcase performances from three of SNACK’s current favourite Scottish grassroots artists: EYVE, Helicon, and Theo Bleak. With quality sounds ranging across dancehall/electronic exploration, psych-rock, and alt-folk-rock/shoegaze, it’ll be a diverse bunch of performances for sure.


EYVE | Um, Indecisive (Music Video)

The acts have been rightly lauded by SNACK and all of the other main Scottish music platforms over the last year so, if you’ve in any way been paying attention, you’ll probably already be pretty familiar with all three.

As for the business of the actual awards, SAMA have long championed what might at times over the years, if not now, been considered niche genres: metal and hip-hop especially, previously under-represented elsewhere, in a Scottish context at least. Hats off to them for that.

Another thing the SAMAs absolutely gets right is their choice of nominators, with those on the judging panels all regularly involved in supporting Scotland’s grassroots music, primarily either as event organisers or commentators. Who better to ask? OK, you could ask the musicians, but that wouldn’t rightly work.

Not only is it suitably worthy but it’s always a cracking night out – so get your tickets sorted and get along. We’ll see you there.

This year’s categories are: Best Rock/Alternative, Best Metal, Best Live Act, Best Electronic, Best Acoustic, and Best Hip Hop – SNACK is delighted to sponsor the Best Newcomer Award for 2023. Seems like a perfect fit to us.


The public vote is open now until Wednesday 22nd November. More details and tickets available here

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