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When Tyla accepted the first Grammy for Best African Music Performance eight months ago, she symbolized the progress, albeit slow, that the Recording Academy had made in honoring global music. For the first time, it seemed like the organization was rising to the occasion: recognizing “Water,” an Amapiano-pop track by a South African singer that became an American hit. “Thank you to the Recording Academy for this category,” said the visibly moved singer in her acceptance speech. “It’s so important.”
The Grammys were widely and rightly praised for presenting the Best African Musical Performance. But just months after Tyla celebrated her win, she became a reminder of how far the Academy still has to go with non-Western music. While “Water” was exactly the type of song the new category was created for, the album it appears on is now struggling to find a spot on the 2025 awards show. THE Hollywood reportera selection committee of R&B experts moved Silence from the Best R&B Album category, where his team initially submitted, to Best Pop Vocal Album.
Tyla’s music has little in common with the albums she’ll now compete with for a nomination, like Taylor Swift’s confessional pop. Department of Tortured Poets or the brooding alternative pop of Billie Eilish Hit me hard and soft. But Tyla didn’t fit into R&B either. Their songs are built around Amapiano percussive beats, transformed from ten-minute dance tracks into digestible hits. Although she relies on R&B to get there, she also works in house, hip-hop and dancehall.
So what should the Grammys do with an album like this? Tyla’s team could have entered Best Progressive R&B Album, which tends to be more open to genre fusion, rather than Best R&B Album, which tends to focus on classic R&B signifiers. (Victoria Monét in debt to Motown Jaguar II won this year’s R&B trophy, while SZA’s adventurer SOS achieved in the Progressive.) However, this solution still would not have recognized Tyla’s South African influence. There’s also Best Global Music Album, but that would also be an odd choice – it’s a category that previously focused on indigenous music traditions but has since become a benchmark for everything from Afrobeats to Indian jazz.
It seems obvious that the Grammys need a Best African Music Album category, even if that comes with its own problems (any “African Music” grouping lumps together disparate styles, merging an entire continent with one genre). While the Academy has always been cautious about treading new ground – it didn’t award the Best Rap Album trophy until 1996, a full seven years after the introduction of Best Rap Performance – this would show that they are serious about continuing their investment in global sounds. . As important as it is for the Grammys to recruit more members who can properly evaluate non-Western genres instead of hastily launching new categories, it’s also important for a professional music organization to keep up with industry trends. But this is impossible when the Academy continues to be reactive rather than proactive toward global music. The award for Best African Musical Performance came too late to recognize hits like “Essence” by Wizkid and Tems or “Calm Down” by Rema.
The issue goes beyond African music. More than six years after BTS scored their first No. 1 album in the United States, there is still no Grammy category dedicated to K-pop; the Academy continues to award reggaeton albums under the name “Urban Music”, even after abandoning the term “urban” carried in the field of R&B; and as exciting as the Featherweight victory for Genesis In the Best Mexican Music Album category, there was no category for Grupo Frontera and Bad Bunny’s cultural hit, “Un x100to.” It’s hard to predict what will break out musically, but the Academy’s track record gives little confidence that it will be ready to respond to the next global genre coming to the U.S., no matter where it comes from.
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