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MEET Madonna’s competition at the Grammys - two mates from Sydney who thought the fruits of their labour were dead and buried.

Dean Bates and Reuben Field scored a nod last week for music’s most prestigious award for their DVD showcasing Cuban rap music, Liberacion - The Songs of the New Cuban Underground.

The nomination in the category of "Best Longform Music Video" pits them against the DVD of Madonna’s Confessions tour and R&B megastar R. Kelly. It also makes them the only Australians in this year’s awards.

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"You can’t believe that you’re up against someone like Madonna," said Bates, the producer half of the duo’s small Darlinghurst film company, Starchild Productions.

Field, the director, said: "As far as we knew the project vanished, fell off the face of the Earth 18 months ago. We hadn’t heard a word about how it went in the US. It was literally dead and buried."

Then Chris Murphy - the former INXS manager who shot more than 100 hours of footage in Cuba before handing it to Bates and Field to make into a film - rang with the incredible news.

"He called up and basically said, ‘I told you to stick with me. You know I’m hard work but now I’ve got you nominated for a Grammy’," said Field, 25, the youngest nominee in his category.

Field then tried to tell Bates, who was too busy working on a new project (the upcoming ABC comedy series Review) for it to sink in.

"He just kind of ignored me," Field said. "A lot of people go, ‘Oh that’s great . . . hang on, a Grammy?"

The DVD explores the strange world of "Reggaeton", a strain of music invented by Cubans listening to rap music on Miami radio using illegal long distance antennae.

"Much of what I did was just get- ting missing chunks of everything," Field said.

"It was like an old dinosaur because we only had some of the bones. We had to go through archival footage of Cuba. We ended up learning about the Cuban revolution.

"We tried to, as intelligently as we could, mix it in with the music."

Now the pair will jetting to Los Angeles in February for the Grammy Awards ceremony.

"We’re not expecting to win since we weren’t expecting to be nominated," Field joked.

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