Questlove can be acknowledged with the 2025 Peabody Trailblazer Award for his affect on music historical past and cultural storytelling.
Questlove can be honored with the 2025 Peabody Trailblazer Award in Los Angeles on October 10 for his expansive contributions to music, documentary storytelling and the preservation of Black tradition.
The Peabody group introduced the award earlier this week, citing the Oscar-winning filmmaker and longtime drummer of The Roots as a “very important cultural archivist and social commentator.”
The consideration celebrates people whose inventive work drives cultural progress and social change.
“By way of his prodigious output of inventive work throughout documentary filmmaking, publishing, music, and extra, Questlove has emerged as certainly one of our most essential voices in understanding American tradition of the previous and current,” mentioned Peabody government director Dr. Jeffrey Jones, per Selection.
He added that Thompson’s work highlights “the centrality of black musical genius in shaping and defining music and tradition the world over.”
Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, who first rose to fame as co-founder and drummer of The Roots, has constructed a profession that stretches far past the stage.
The Roots, recognized for his or her genre-blending sound and dwell instrumentation, at present function the home band for “The Tonight Present Starring Jimmy Fallon.”
His 2021 documentary Summer time of Soul unearthed long-forgotten footage from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Competition. The movie gained the Academy Award for Greatest Documentary Function and took dwelling each the Grand Jury Prize and Viewers Award at Sundance. It additionally earned a Peabody Award.
Thompson’s latest tasks embrace Emmy-nominated documentaries, Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius) and Women & Gents… 50 Years Of SNL Music additional cementing his function as a storyteller centered on Black excellence and historic preservation.
The Peabody Trailblazer Award has beforehand gone to Quinta Brunson, creator of Abbott Elementary, and Issa Rae, who was the inaugural recipient. Brunson is ready to current the award to Thompson in the course of the ceremony.
Civil rights icon Angela Davis will be a part of Thompson for a dwell dialogue about his legacy and affect in the course of the occasion, which can be held at The Solar Rose Lodge in West Hollywood. Dropbox is the presenting sponsor.
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