When a nation of highly competitive and talented people are represented by a stellar body of work from one of their most loved acts; Wizkid’s Made in Lagos, on an international level– the Grammys, but come up short, several questions pervade and in this story, we attempt to answer them.
‘Ojuelegba, Shitta, oya ask your sister, my music travel no Visa!’ Wizkid had brazenly declared in 2011 on No Lele, a single off his debut album, Superstar. 11 years after, the singer’s music has not only spiralled past the sprawling slummy suburbs of the mentioned places but beyond Nigeria and the African content to make him Africa’s musical crown prince and one true starboy.
In that time, the megastar while reaching myriad corners of the world with his music has also racked up an awe-commanding shelf of accolades, home and abroad. And by so doing, Wizkid, remarkably channelled the West-African polyrhythmic musical sensation, Afrobeats.
On the 28th of November, 2021, Wizkid’s talent, grace, strife, and countless other threads had woven together to place him once more at the entry posts of the Recording Academy; the Grammys, which have generally been deemed as the hallowed grounds for musical excellence.
A second-time event for Wizkid who is no stranger to award shows, mammoth or obscure, his return to the Grammys’ nomination list had been a brace that saw him take up space on two categories off the back of what has been considered his magnum opus; Made in Lagos.
Yet with this stellar body of work contending for the categories; Best Global Music Performance and Best Global Music Album, Wizkid drew up a loss at the Grammy stage.
So the dawn of the 64th Grammys had shone on largely downcast Nigerians who’d earlier been fully positive about getting in the least, one additional Gramophone-shaped statuette from the Recording Academy with thanks to the Starboy or the similarly doubly-nominated Kutis. While the nation remained largely enveloped in angst from the loss, amidst it was a feeling of bittersweet as the win for Angelique Kidjo’s Mother Nature album signified a win for the continent and by virtue of the featured Nigerian acts, a significant win for us as well.
Notwithstanding, this did nothing to stop the wave of anger and feelings of theft by the Grammys, birthing in its wake, several takes, uninformed or otherwise and a long string of questions; ‘Was Wizkid robbed by the Grammys?’ ‘Are the Grammy awards outdated?’ ‘Should Africans care about the Grammys?’ And more. In this piece, while we may not have all the answers, we attempt to put the bits and pieces together to draw out viable reasons why Wizkid didn’t get a Grammy in utmost recognition of his works.
The history of Grammy Awards’ Best Global Music
Founded in 1959, the Grammy Award is primarily an award presented by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, to recognise outstanding achievement in the music industry of the United States and is considered one of the four major annual American entertainment awards.
At first happening with 28 awards given, the show has over time expanded to accommodate as many as 100 categories and as at their last edition, had 86 categories.
Then in 1992, the academy had conceived the idea to award international performers exhibiting “non-European, indigenous traditions” with their music and it wasn’t until 4 years later, in a bid to solve the problem of “compressing 75% or more of the world’s music into a single category,” they’d broadened the parameters of World music to include ‘non-Western classical music’.
In 2003, the award was further split into two separate categories for Best Traditional World Music Album and Best Contemporary World Music Album and then merged back together 9 years later. Its recent classification as Best Global Music Album was introduced recently in 2020, in line with their desire to be more culturally sensitive to the modern world.
The Recording Academy had explained the change thus, writing;
“This category recognises excellence in albums of world music, including recordings of international non-Western classical music, international non-American and non-British traditional folk music, international cross-cultural music based on the previously mentioned genres as well as international recordings of world beat, world jazz (with a higher percentage of world than jazz music), world pop and cross-cultural music.”
Interestingly, ever since this change, the position of winner has been occupied by Africans, once by Burna Boy and twice by Angelique Kidjo who has also led Africa to be the most frequent holder of the award since the inception of the category and its convergence.
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