Sophia Michaels
Amaarae
Popular Ghanaian-American singer/songwriter, Amaarae, has faulted the decision of the organisers of the Grammy Awards, to put all African music genres under one category.
Recall that the Grammys recently created a category for ‘Best African Music Performance.’
The Recording Academy said the category is open to both contemporary and traditional music from the African continent, including Afrobeats, Afro-pop, Amapiano, High Life, Fuji, etc.
But in a recent interview with Metro TV, Amaarae said the packing of all African musical genres under a single category at the Grammys was “reductive.”
She said: “The idea of an African category [at the Grammys] is great in practice, but I think it is reductive. There are way too many categories to just placed under an umbrella of African music.
“Take a song like ‘Sad Girlz’, ‘Calm Down,’ or ‘Calm Down’ or ‘Last Last’; these are all songs that didn’t just do well in Africa but did well globally and had humongous global impacts. So, to me, they are popular records.
“So, I feel like a record like [Rema’s] ‘Calm Down’ with the remix with Selena Gomez, that should be able to compete in pop categories [at the Grammys]. I feel like [Burna Boy’s] ‘Last Last’ should be able to compete in hip-hop, RnB or pop categories and not be relegated to just the African category because that’s reductive of the works that [African] artists have done to break boundaries.”
