Grammys Face Debate Over Representation of African Music

The recent Grammy win by Tyla for Best African Music Performance with “PUSH 2 START” has sparked familiar debates about what constitutes “African” music. The backlash questioning the song’s authenticity reveals a persistent issue: the way African music is perceived, marketed, and categorized on a global scale. The expectation remains that African creativity should adhere to traditional sounds, appearing ancestral, percussive, and visibly rooted in heritage.

The Colonial Appetite for “Authenticity”

The core of this issue lies in a colonial perspective that frames Africa as a site of “culture” rather than modernity. Historically, African music has been categorized as ritual, folklore, and tradition, valued primarily for its representation of a fixed past. This logic continues to influence institutions like the Grammys, impacting how African artists are received. While artists are welcomed, they are often expected to embody Africanness through specific elements like heavy percussion, call-and-response patterns, indigenous languages, and visible markers of heritage. Conversely, when African artists incorporate global pop, R&B, electronic, or alternative music influences, their work is viewed as derivative rather than innovative, while similar hybridity in Western pop is celebrated as experimental.

Tyla Is Not the Exception — She Is the Rule

Tyla’s success is not an anomaly. She represents a lineage of African artists who reject the notion that African music must resemble a museum exhibit. Genres like amapiano, born in South African townships, exemplify this evolution, blending deep house, jazz, kwaito, and drum experimentation. Other artists, such as Amaarae, Rema, Burna Boy, and Tems, similarly defy easy categorization with their genre-fluid and innovative sounds. These artists demonstrate that African music is inherently global, experimental, and historically intertwined with the world.

What the Grammys Actually Want

The Grammys have historically managed music politically through categories, functioning as an ideological sorting system. Black artists were initially excluded from major categories, then relegated to segregated genres like R&B and Soul. These categories operate as racial technologies, determining what innovation is considered universal and what remains “cultural” or “niche.” Beyoncé’s Renaissance, a dance record rooted in Black queer histories, exemplifies this, being confined to dance and R&B categories while Album of the Year favored safer, whiter pop projects. The newly created “Best African Music Performance” category reinforces this logic by compartmentalizing African artists within regional or stylistic lanes, rather than recognizing their contemporary, experimental, and globally generative work.

The Question We Keep Avoiding: What is African Music?

The debate surrounding Tyla’s music highlights a fundamental question: what defines African music? Historically, African music has been dynamic and hybrid, shaped by trade, migration, religious exchange, and regional dialogue. Colonialism further intensified this, leading to interactions with Western instruments and capitalist markets. Therefore, African music has always been adaptive and inventive, absorbing and transforming external sounds. Demanding sonic “Africanness” today ignores this history and implies Africa exists outside of time. African music is defined by its creators, origins, and its reflection of African realities—past, present, and future.

Symbolic Inclusion Isn’t Liberation

While the Grammys’ recognition of African music is often seen as progress, symbolic inclusion without substantial change is limited. African artists are permitted into the mainstream, but only if they conform to expectations and represent a continent in ways that resonate with Western audiences. True recognition would involve allowing African artists to exist without constant explanation of their Africanness, without being pressured to perform tradition alongside modernity. Tyla’s win, and her subsequent win, is caught within this contradiction, requiring her to be experimental while remaining within geographic categories. The issue isn’t the evolution of African music, but rather the world’s inability to fully embrace it.