What We Can Learn From Nigeria’s Disappointing Night At The Grammys

After much ado, the 66th Grammy ceremony has come and gone, but its ripples in popular culture and conversations have not quite disappeared. Winners on the night haven’t climbed down from the euphoria of clinching the most prestigious award in music, but for the losers, it is a time to reflect and restrategize. Most Nigerians will relate with the latter category, as they had imagined and hoped that at least one member of our fine contingent of nominated artists (consisting of Asake, Burna Boy, Davido and Ayra Starr) would snag a win from the 10 nominations they shared. That was not to be, however, and while a number of reasons have been put forward for this unlikely snub, there are important lessons we can take away from Nigeria’s disappointing night in Los Angeles.

It may bear a prestigious name and be embodied by an iconic plaque, but ultimately, the Grammy award is decided by a very human, very American selection committee. To properly vote on African songs, they would need to have a proper understanding of the songs and be provided some context of our music scene, so that a selection of ‘Best Song’ does not become ‘Most Popular Song’ simply because the voters opt for the  familiar item on the list. Whilst we hope the voting process becomes more and more refined in the future to ensure quality, the continued growth of Nigerian music and artists around the world will work to ensure that no nominated Nigerian song is unfamiliar to the voting committee. 

In the meantime, we can acknowledge the strides that have brought us this far. Before this iteration of the Grammys, Nigerian music competed exclusively in the ‘Best Global Album’ and ‘Best Global Song’ categories with poorly specified entry criteria—populated effectively by outsiders from all over the world that the Grammys wanted to acknowledge without granting them their own categories. This year, the Grammys made two major improvements to that model. Nigerian music still competed in the ‘Best Global’ categories, but for the first time we were not confined to it. Burna’s Sittin’ On Top Of The World earned a nomination for Best Melodic Rap Performance, competing against songs from Drake, Doja Cat and Lil Durk. It lost the award eventually, but it set an important precedent, and one that Nigerians had needed for a long time. When Wizkid’s Essence blew up globally in 2021, entering mainstream US conversations as one of the unofficial songs of the summer, its journey culminated eventually in the ‘Best Global’ category, which only worked to reinforce the notion that Nigerian music, no matter how mainstream or popular, was already predestined to occupy certain categories. The following year, the same scenario played out with different actors, this time Burna Boy and his megahit, Last Last. The fact that both songs eventually lost these nominations only made the situation more unpalatable. This year, Burna Boy shows these confines can be broken. And although he took home none of his four nominations, Burna’s momentous performance at the award ceremony—the first ever by an Afrobeats act—shows just how much Nigerian music is integrating into the global music scene.

Burna Boy at The Grammys
Source:YouTube/ Recording Academy

Another first for Nigerian music at the 66th Grammys was the ‘Best African Music Performance’ category. It is the first time the Academy will recognise African music as its own entity, and it was spurred by the significant strides African (read: Nigerian) music has taken globally in the last few years. Interestingly, for its inaugural edition, the award was claimed by Tyla’s Water, the only non-Nigerian nominee on the ballot, which was undisputedly the biggest African song in the period under review. While this actualises one of the major fears we put forward at the time the category was created, Nigeria’s snub this year should not be a source of worry. Keeping our momentum, we should be able to produce better nominees next year, when, hopefully, a similar category may be created to include albums as well. 

As that happens, though, there will also be a need for better song selection on the part of the artist. The Grammy maintains a submission policy where artists may put forth choice songs for nomination in choice categories. For the ‘Best African Music Performance’, Asake submitted Amapiano, his genre-blending collaboration with label boss, Olamide, while Davido went with UNAVAILABLE. Both artists perhaps had songs in their folders that might have fared better. Lonely At The Top, with its blend of subtle traditional percussion and Asake’s euphoric writing was a national sensation and one of the best-performing Nigerian tracks of the year, while Davido’s Feel possesses a highly invigorating production that seduces you to the dance floor. In the end, both singers went for songs with beat-heavy Amapiano elements, perhaps seeing this to be a key advantage to fulfill the ‘Africanness’ of the category. 

Tyla emerging with the award points majorly to two important factors. First, the influence of the song’s global impact in deciding its win, not only for its familiarity to the voting audience, but perhaps because a song’s popularity may be a key judgment criteria. Second, Water snagging the award without holding on sonically or thematically to distinct African elements shows that the Nigerian contenders overstated the importance of indigenous-sounding music to the selection process. These would no doubt be noted by the artists and their teams in their selection processes for subsequent awards. 

Beyond the Grammy awards and the conversations it has spurred, the need to develop and respect our local awards organizations can simply not be overemphasized. For its last two editions, the Headies has been held in Atlanta, Georgia, a good distance away from the country whose music it meant to subserve. There is a cruel irony in the fact that this relocation–moving to the world’s commercial center to accord the award a little more prestige—did nothing to encourage more Nigerian artists to show up for the award even after receiving several nominations, but the same stars had no problems pulling up to Los Angeles for the Grammy awards. 

Ultimately, the fact remains that Nigerian fans can not dictate the rules for an American award, or even expect to perfectly understand them. The only award show that can be hoped to properly respect and service our music is our own, so it is left for local award institutions, especially the Headies, to pick up the slack and forge themselves into entities that will be respected by Nigerian music. A lot has been said about this already, so we can only hope that its organizers have taken corrections and will be addressing some of its perennial issues when its next iteration rolls around later this year—bringing the award show back home is already a major step in the right direction. For the Nigerian artists licking their wounds after this latest disappointment, perhaps it would be a good time to begin to accord our local platforms the same importance they do to foreign award shows.