The 2024 Grammy Awards saw the inception of the “Best African Music Performance” category. However, some digging shows how the category leaves out a large scope of the music coming out of the continent.
Last year, Grammys CEO Harvey Mason Jr. announced the new category as a way “to acknowledge and appreciate a broader array of artists” compared to the previous two global Grammy categories, which typically favored African artists as the primary contenders for nominations, NPR reported.
Tyla took home the award on Sunday night for her smash hit single “Water.” While the category sought to amplify music
coming out of Africa, the category only included nominees from two countries: Nigeria, which birthed the nominees Burna Boy, Davido, Ayra Starr and Asake & Olamide, and South Africa, the birthplace of Tyla, and producer Musa Keys, who is featured on Davido’s track.The Academy reportedly shared several genres they aimed to incorporate into the category, which included chimurenga (traditional Zimbabwean thumb-piano music played on electric instruments) to Ethio-jazz (a fusion of Amharic melodies from Ethiopia with 12-note jazz scales). However, in the end, only artists who released Afrobeats and Amapiano, two popular African music styles, made the final list of nominees.
Elsewhere, the nominees only represented cities in Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy, or South Africa, the continent’s third-largest economy. This leaves out a big chunk of the continent that serves a population estimated at 1,494,993,924 with 2,000 plus living languages. However, the seven songs nominated in the category contain lyrics that are either entirely in English or largely contain English words.
“These two nations— Nigeria and South Africa— are not the only ones in African music. Africa is diverse in cultures, languages and music. I don’t even know Burna Boy. I’ve never listened to him,” Aziza Brahim, a respected “desert blues” singer from the displaced Sahrawi people in the disputed Western Sahara region says.
Artists like Burna Boy have received some of the biggest success for an African artist. He received four Grammy nominations in 2024 and won one in 2021 for the Best Global Music Album for his album, Twice As Tall. Having reached international superstardom with sold-out shows in the U.S. and U.K., other African artists wonder if his commercial success overshadows other musicians coming out of the continent.
“I feel like there’s some laziness with the Global Grammys,” Emel Mathlouthi, a Tunisian singer says.
“Once the
Grammy voters identify an artist that works for them within the global category, then that person is gonna be present over and over and over and over. There’s not a huge effort to really be representative of diverse people globally.”RELATED CONTENT: As Trevor Noah Gears Up For Grammy Awards Hosting Gig, He Embraces The Challenges Of Comedy: ‘Sometimes People Will Not Laugh’