The Grammys Still Has a Narrow-Minded View of African Music

In 2020, in an attempt to broaden the awards’ scope, The Recording Academy elected to overhaul the Best World Music Album category. The overhaul involved, amongst other things, changing the category’s name to Best Global Album. The motivations were to some degree cosmetic; the World Music tag had become mired in connotations of colonialism and Americentrism; baggage The Academy was more than eager to move on from. But the change also hoped to correct for the category’s historically insular perspective on global music, making it more representative of the diverse range of music being created around the world. Five years later, despite the awards’ ostentatious revamp and the awarding board’s unremitting assertion of a commitment to greater inclusivity, the same problems persist. 

Earlier today, Matthew David Benson, who goes by the moniker Matt B, picked up the Best Global Music Award for his album ALKEBULAN II at the 67th edition of the Grammy Awards, edging out four other contenders including Rema. In an earlier article outlining the Grammy nominees from Nigeria this season and their respective winning prospects, I narrowed down the strongest contenders in the Global Music Album category to Matt B’s ALKEBULAN II and Rema’s Heis, giving the edge to ALKEBULAN II. While ALKEBULAN II is undoubtedly an excellent body of work, my prediction of its win did not issue from its quality or cultural impact or the degree to which it advanced the genre to which it belongs—Afrobeats—but rather its conformity to a tacit set of rules; one you’re likely familiar with by now if you’ve followed the category for a few years: folksy sounds that invoke grand themes and elemental deities. In a slightly less formal construction: Kumbaya music. 

This bias, epitomized in the Global music category, is the biggest problem with the Grammys today, as concerns its relationship with African music. It’s a problem that is protracted and tiring, warranting resignation to the status quo, having been broached by an endless list of cultural commentators. But the Recording Academy has in the last few years held out a faint flicker of hope through their assertions of being amenable to learning and the minor changes they’ve made over the years. So, it’s perhaps worth exploring. 

There’s nothing wrong with folksy African music, far from it, it’s a crucial part of African culture. However, it does not represent the totality of African music, nor does it automatically translate to a higher quality of African music. There’s something deeply unsettling about consistently nominating contemporary African albums of immense quality—Heis, Made in Lagos, African Giant—in a category where, if historical precedent is a reliable indicator, they stand no chance of winning. Almost as though they nominate these contemporary artists to ward off the backlash that would arise if they completely ignored them, without any intention of actually awarding them. It’s a form of tokenization that prevents the Grammys from making real improvements. When they nominate these artists, they can sit back and claim to have recognized these artists. But does it really serve any lasting purpose when said artists stand no chance of winning? 

The solution would have to start with a re-education and recalibration of the awarding board’s notions of African music. African music, most prominently Afrobeats, has been on the rise for the past few years, so it’s appalling that the world’s most esteemed music award keeps doing it a disservice by constantly mischaracterizing and limiting its scope. A practical fix could also include bifurcating the award into two sections—one for traditional and the other for contemporary global music. Interestingly, The Recording Academy has previously explored this idea. In 2003, the category was split into Traditional World Music Album and Contemporary World Music Album. However, in 2012, in a sweeping overhaul, to boost the award’s prestige, which saw the number of categories decrease from 109 to 78, the board walked back on the move, reconciling the two categories. It’s dispiriting that in 2025, the age-old issue of the Grammy’s stilted perception of African music persists. If they insist on nominating African music, they have to take on the responsibility of educating themselves on the music and culture and representing it adequately. Anything short of that is a disrespect to the African continent.