Dan Sultan To Headline NIMA Concert

This year's National Indigenous Music Awards are preparing for their most massive year yet, underscored by the announcement that their climactic concert event will be headlined by high-achieving “country soul rock'n'roll” troubadour Dan Sultan.

The announcement came this morning as Nathan Lovett-Murray, a former AFL player and the founding director of Payback Records, was joined by Sultan, triple j Unearthed community producer Ariel Katz and MusicNT/NIMAs executive director Mark Smith to officially open nominations for the 2014 NIMAs as well as entries for the triple j Unearthed NIMAs competition. The awards will be held in Darwin on Friday, July 15.

Further putting the spotlight on the country's growing indigenous music scene will be the NIMAs' inaugural Hip Hop Showcase, to be co-presented by Lovett-Murray and feature esteemed scene identities such as Briggs and Jimblah.

More names are yet to be announced, but the showcase already promises to be one of the NIMAs' most insightful and enlightening features.

“This year's NIMAs will celebrate the indigenous hip hop scene, which has grown from strength to strength. The NIMAs have the capacity to bring a national focus to these artists and I believe this showcase will consolidate the strength of the genre in the minds of the music media and the general public,” Smith said.

“This promises to be something special and the NIMAs are proud to present such a showcase for the first time.”

The collaboration between NIMA and triple j has so far yielded the discovery of acts such as Thelma Plum (2012) and Robbie Miller (2013), the latter of whom has no misconceptions about the role the competition played in jump-starting his career:

“Before winning, music was only a bedroom hobby that honestly wouldn't have gone much further,” he said, “but, since winning, it has enabled me to play shows across Australia, sign on with a great manager and have my music aired to a national audience.”

The 2014 National Indigenous Music Awards are presented by MusicNT as part of the Darwin Festival. Tickets are on sale today; nominations close Friday, June 20.

For more information, check the NIMAs website.