Since its establishment in 1959, the Grammys has evolved from being just an American music award show to becoming one of the biggest recognition and award shows in the global music industry. The Grammy’s is now the first point of reference for lovers of music throughout Europe, America, Africa, Asia, and Latin America, becoming a universal body that gives honour to deserving musicians throughout the world.
It isn’t surprising that the Grammys has achieved such dominance, considering the strength of the US market, which dominates the world in the aspect of global music sales.
Despite its respected position, the hard question that must be asked and answered is whether the Grammys are truly a global institution, as they claim, or whether they have focused on only a few music categories while sidelining music categories from other parts of the world.
For many years, the Grammys had continued to disrespect Africa by grouping Afrobeats, Japanese music, and other different genres into what they loosely termed ‘World Music.’ Without any consideration, it simply homogenized all music released outside the West into three slots, placing so many different genres to compete for side by side simply because they didn’t fit into the Western categorisation.
Following several criticisms about the colonial and inferior undertones, the Grammys replaced World Music with Global Music in 2021; still lumping Africa, Asia, and the rest of the world together.
The Recording Academy of the United States, which runs the Grammys, as well as several ethnomusicologists and artists, seemed to think it was more inclusive and modern than the previous. But the incredible claim went unchallenged, even though every sane person can tell that there’s not so much of a difference between World Music and Global Music, especially when you consider the different music genres from different countries that have been squeezed into that category.
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However, with a long list of African genres, including Afrobeats, Soukous, Makosa, Juju, Amapiano, Fuji, South African Jazz, Highlife, Hiplife, Kwaito, Ethio Jazz, Township Music, Bongo Flava, and a long list of others, it never made sense for all these genres to not only be grouped together but to also be joined with other music from different parts of the world.
It was as if the Grammys had decided to uphold the ancient systems of classification of music in Western music shops where you would only find genres like country, rock, pop, R&B/Soul, classical, hip hop, reggae, blues, and gospel, with nothing outside of these western categories recognized enough to be classified and sold. Over the past 64 years, in their own way, the Grammys continued to promote this discrimination before the face of the whole world, and many people either chose to ignore it or the Grammys turned deaf ears to the calls.
However, in the 2022 Grammy Awards, it became obvious to everyone who could see that the Global Music category was not only unrealistic but also restrictive. It shocked the world when Popular Nigerian Artist Burna Boy, failed to win the best Global Music Album for his album, Love Damini, which had gained popularity throughout the world and was expected to bag the award. What was even more gobsmacking was the fact that a Japanese artist, Masa Takuma, won the award over Burna Boy. No one is begrudging Takuma’s Japanese instrumental music by saying it wasn’t great, because it was. But the mistake in itself was grouping Japanese music alongside Afrobeats under Global Music. Such a categorisation should never have existed, and it caused displeased voices to rise throughout the world against such an anomaly.
Even though at least fourteen musicians of African descent have won the Grammys, they didn’t deem it fit to recognize African Music and its massive influence on global music until now.
On the 14th of June 2023, the Grammys decided to add an African Music category to their yearly awards, which is an obvious step up from having African music grouped under the vague and ill-defined Global Music. However, it is too early to celebrate, if there’s even anything to celebrate in the first place.
Yes, the Grammys have woken up from their years-long slumber to dedicate a category to African music. However, the Grammys has still failed to realise the vast range of music genres in African music. That ought to be the next step. It is not enough to lump all African music together while feeling like you’ve done a good deed.
While announcing the new category, the Grammys listed several African music genres that are considered under the new category, including Afrobeats, Afro-Pop, Afro-fusion, Afro-House, Alte, Amapiano, Fuji, Bongo Flava, Ethio Jazz, Genge, Ghanian Drill, Kizomba, Mapouka, Chimurenga, High Life, Kwassa, South African Hip-Hop, and Ndombolo’
Interestingly, this announcement pointed to one fact; the fact that African music is just too large, diverse, rich, and varied to be homogenised and grouped under one category. Countless musicians doing music across any of the genres mentioned will all be competing for a single award.
If the same Grammys could decide as far back as 1985 to create a category for Best Reggae Album at the Grammys, differentiating it from calypso, chutney, and soca, which were similar genres that were popular across Trinidad and the Caribbean and could also decide to have five categories for Latin music, including Best Tropical Latin Album, Best Latin Pop Album, Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album, Best Musica Urbana Album, and Best Regional Mexican Music Album, why the hesitation about doing the same for African Music Genres?
In 2022, the Grammys only allocated two award categories out of ninety-one to Global Music, which were Best Global Music Performance and Best Global Music Album.
Now that they deemed it fit to add the new African category, which is the Best African Music Performance, the next question is, why isn’t there a Best African Music Album just like we have with the Best Global Music and Performance Album? The competition is still too stiff, and the ground is still crowded with too many different music genres and styles to declare it an inclusive and truly global award.
It is high time that the Grammys stopped the homogenisation of non-Western music. The introduction of the Best African Music Performance award is only the first step in giving African music the recognition and accolades that it very much deserves.
The Grammys must do more to create more categories for other genres of African music beyond the Best African Music Performance and Best Global Music Album categories. The time to do it is now!
