Who should be counted as African at Grammy Awards?

Grammy Awards is a dedicated place for African music, but it is already proving controversial exactly one year after the introduction of the category.

The best African music performance made her hits with Tyla of South Africa with a mixture of South African Amapiano and Ephropop.

It was a step in the industry, especially by African artists.

But enrollment for this year’s award has increased eyebrows, especially with the inclusion of US R&B Star Chris Brown.

The 35-year-old has been nominated for her chart-topping single sensation, which includes Ephrobets Elements and Nigerian artists Davido and Loja guest vowels.

However, the participation of an American artist in an African music category has created some debate.

Should non-African artists be considered in a category to demonstrate African talent?

Grammy CEO Harvey Mason Junior told the BBC, “Music is about inclusion. We do not want to exclude people from styles.”

“If we start deciding who can or cannot do a certain type of music, we lose the essence of creativity.”

Head of Gramiz says that this type of cross-dancing is expected.

“We have seen it first with Latin, we’ve seen it with K-Pop and now you are starting to look at it with Afrobeats and Amapiano,” they say.

“We all like to respect music (whether it) where it comes or which makes it. If it is excellent then we want to celebrate it.”

This year, another bone of the dispute is dominated by Afrobets, whose roots are in Nigeria and Ghana.

There is a feeling that Gramizs focus too much on it, for the boycott of other African music styles, despite the call for inclusion.

Nigerian musical journalist iomide Tayo says he understands why Afrobates dominate this year’s awards.

“I don’t think Afrobates are better,” he tells the BBC.

“It’s just that Afrobeats have performed over three decades. We have consistently pushed great music, superstars and events that have attracted the world,” Tayo, Lagos, describes Tayo.

Nigerians living abroad have also played an important role in the popularity of Afrobates.

“One of the major factors of Nigerian migrant in England and North America is why Ephrobates exploded in Europe and America,” Tayo says.

While other Africa-based music business professionals see a bright future for other African music styles, saying that this year can happen once.

For example, Amaapiano, a style that crossed 1.4 billion streams on the music app Spotify in 2023.

Rafael Benza, head of the Johannesburg record label VTH season, says the best African performance goes against pigeon.

He said, “Coming from Amapiano’s house, I will say (musicians) are doing a great job and I think next year you will see Amapiano artists nominating in this category.”

The best African music performance category was introduced as a way to honor Africa’s growing influence on global music.

When Tyla won, he defeated Nigerian Heavyweight, such as Davido and Berna Boy, established his place on the international stage.

Since then, the 22 -year -old has been seen in Met Gala in New York and depicted in top fashion magazines, proving that the grammese effect is real.

However, this year’s nominee, Yami Alade, Berna Boy, with a joint enrollment for Alade, Tems and Aske and Viskid, have been almost completely transferred to Nigerian artists with Davido and Lojy.

“To be impartial for Chris Brown, he has been invested in Afrobates and African music for a long time,” Tayo says, stating that American composer flew to Nigeria to cooperate with Davido and Wiskid. .

“We have an inner joke in Nigeria that we say that Chris brown is Nigerian, because he pops up all the time in our songs and our music videos.”

Last month, he also organized two large-scale selling concerts at the 90,000-Citter Stadium in Johannesburg-people traveling from Southern Africa to watch their performance, who fans said that there was electrification.

African musicians have won Grammes long before the establishment of the Best African Music Performance Award.

Maryam Makeba of South Africa was the first to win – Best Public Recording – for her collaboration with Harry Belafonte in 1966, which was only called with Belafonate/Macba.

African artists became more than a feature with the introduction of the best world music album after 1992.

This category has gone into various guise over the years – including to be divided into traditional and contemporary world music awards – and is now known as the best global music album.

Multi-award winners include Angelic Kidjo, Yusu N’Dor, Ali Farka Tour and Ladmith Black Mambazo.

But African musicians are often broken from that category, for example, South Africa’s Black Coffee won the best dance/electronic album in 2022.

Hope is that to combat Afrobates’ dominance, more categories from Africa will be introduced in Gramies in the coming years.

This will cover the growing popularity of African music globally – and better reflects the huge number of music styles produced in Africa.