The Recording Academy, the brain behind the Grammys, has announced three new categories for the 2024 Awards, to be officially known as the 66th GRAMMY Awards.
The categories are Best Pop Dance Recording, Best Alternative Jazz Album and Best African Music Performance, which has already sparked excitement among African musicians.
That category, according to the Recording Academy, “recognizes recordings that utilize unique local expressions from across the African continent”.
It is to highlight regional melodic, harmonic and rhythmic musical traditions.
It includes but not limited to the Afrobeat, Afro-fusion, Afro Pop, Afrobeats, Alte, Amapiano, Bongo Flava, Genge, Kizomba, Chimurenga, High Life, Fuji, Kwassa, Ndombolo, Mapouka, Ghanaian Drill, Afro-House, South African Hip-Hop, and Ethio Jazz genres.
The category additions and amendments were voted on and passed at the Recording Academy’s most recent semiannual Board of Trustees meeting held in May 2023.
The new categories, especially the Best African Music Performance, will amplify and expand the reach of African music and its creators.
Harvey Manson Jr., the CEO of the Recording Academy, made an official visit to Ghana in 2022, where he reiterated the organization’s commitment to representing African music with utmost accuracy.
He emphasized the meticulousness with which they approached the task of providing the right representation of the diverse musical landscape of the continent.
