Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim,

Assalamu-Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh,

Your Highnesses,

Your Excellencies,

Distinguished Guests,

Friends and lovers of music,

Good evening.

On behalf of the Aga Khan Music Awards, I heartily welcome you as we gather to celebrate laureates of this Award's cycle. We are so honoured to have been invited to hold these Awards here, in Muscat, in the Sultanate of Oman, a country where arts and culture are central to the nation's identity. To present these Awards, we are honoured to collaborate with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth, the Royal Opera House Muscat, the House of Musical Arts and the Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra. We could not have hoped for better partners and better collaborators for these celebrations.

His Highness the Aga Khan established the Music Awards to celebrate exceptional talent and creativity in the arts. And even though our gathering here in Muscat marks only the second cycle of the Music Awards, our path toward this event tonight began almost 23 years ago, when His Highness the Aga Khan and Prince Amyn Aga Khan created a Music Programme inside the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. That Programme, which I have the honour and privilege of directing, became and served as a catalyst for exploring how music and performing arts can contribute to the mission of a multi-sector development body, namely, the Aga Khan Development Network. The Music Programme, and now the Music Awards, are more than simply a programme in a development organisation. They have become a community, indeed, a family, whose members live all over the world. This family includes music professionals, artists, musicians, students, educators, producers, arts managers, curators, inventors, devoted practitioners, and most importantly – you, the listeners, with the passion and diverse kinds of music that we are endeavouring to support and that we are endeavouring to help flourish.

By joining us here this evening, you are also joining this musical fellowship, this family that we have created. And the creation of this ever-growing community is one of the most important and gratifying outcomes of the Aga Khan Music Awards and the Programme. At the root of this community is the key idea of pluralism, which His Highness the Aga Khan has repeatedly underscored as a fundamental condition for a peaceful and prosperous world.

And tonight, as you take in these diverse musical languages in which our winners and laureates express themselves, I hope that you will agree that the Music Awards Master Jury has done a superb, incredible job of selecting winners who are outstanding artists in their own right, while also collectively representing the cultural diversity of Muslim musical heritage in its contemporary forms.

I thank you so much for being here with us tonight, and I hope that you will enjoy this programme.

Shukran Jazilan.