Africa Is Not a Genre: The Grammys’ Listening Problem

The first artist to win the Best African Music Performance award when the category was introduced at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards in 2024 was Tyla, who won for her song “Water.” She became the inaugural recipient of that newly created Grammy category. When Tyla walked away with her second Grammy in the same category again the other night, this time for “Push 2 Start,” the reaction online was split. Celebration on one side, discomfort on the other. Not discomfort with her win, but with the box it came in. The question was never whether Tyla deserved recognition. The question was why music that comfortably sits alongside global pop records is still being filtered through a single, continental label. This moment did not create the problem. It simply exposed it.

The Grammys have always relied on categories to tell the world how music should be understood. Pop sits next to Rock, which sits next to R&B, Country, Jazz, and Rap. Latin music alone is divided into multiple categories, each recognising that language, region, rhythm, and history shape sound in different ways. Even within Black American music, distinctions exist between traditional R&B, progressive R&B, rap performance, rap song, and rap album. These separations are not cosmetic. They are acknowledgements of difference. Africa, however, is still treated as if difference stops at its borders.

Until very recently, African artists were largely folded into the so-called “world” or later “global” music categories, labels that functioned less as descriptors and more as holding pens for anything that did not fit Western genre logic. The introduction of Best African Music Performance was positioned as progress, and in some ways it was. But progress that collapses an entire continent into a single competitive lane is still built on a misunderstanding. Africa is not a genre. It is a geography filled with musical systems that do not share a single rhythm, language, structure, or intention.

When you listen closely, that diversity becomes impossible to ignore. Afrobeats, Fuji, Juju, and Highlife in Nigeria do not operate the same way as Ghanaian Highlife or Hiplife. South African amapiano, gqom, and kwaito follow different rhythmic logics from Congolese soukous or Senegalese mbalax. Ethiopian ethio-jazz does not speak the same musical language as Malian wassoulou. These styles are not variations of one sound. They are complete traditions shaped by different histories, instruments, and cultural needs. Yet the Grammys continue to ask them to compete as though they are interchangeable.

Once that framing is accepted, a second problem emerges quietly but powerfully. When vastly different styles are judged together, familiarity becomes the deciding factor. Grammy voters are not neutral machines. They are industry professionals largely trained and socialised within Western music systems. Faced with unfamiliar rhythmic structures or vocal approaches, they are more likely to gravitate toward records that sound legible, polished, and already aligned with global pop expectations. This does not require bad intent. The structure itself nudges taste in a particular direction.

Over time, that structure shapes outcomes. Looking at how African artists have historically been rewarded by the Grammys, a pattern emerges. Many of the continent’s most celebrated figures have been recognised through global or world categories rather than mainstream genre lanes. Angélique Kidjo, one of the most Grammy-decorated African artists, has built an extraordinary career within those frames. Her success is unquestionable, but the lane she was placed in still tells its own story. The recognition exists, but it exists inside a separate enclosure.

The same tension appears in more recent wins. When Burna Boy won Best Global Music Album for Twice as Tall, the moment was widely celebrated as a breakthrough. And it was. But the album itself leans heavily into hybridity, blending Afrobeats with global pop production, international features, and structures that translate easily across markets. The music is excellent. The recognition is deserved. Still, the incentive embedded in that win is difficult to ignore. The closer African music moves toward Western-friendly frameworks, the more legible it becomes to the institution handing out the trophies.

This is where the conversation often becomes uncomfortable, because it is misread as a critique of artists rather than systems. Artists respond to institutions the same way water responds to gravity. The Grammys still carry enormous symbolic and material power. A win can mean bigger stages, stronger distribution deals, festival bookings, sync placements, and long-term career leverage. When one category becomes the primary gateway to that power, artists understandably adjust their sound, their collaborators, and sometimes even their language to increase their chances of recognition.

That adjustment does not happen universally or consciously, but it happens often enough to shape the landscape. It helps explain why so much globally celebrated African music begins to share similar sonic fingerprints, why traditional elements are sometimes softened, and why experimentation rooted deeply in local culture struggles to travel through the same institutional channels. The system does not prohibit originality. It simply does not reward it consistently.

Amapiano makes this dynamic especially visible. The genre emerged organically in South Africa, shaped by township culture, local dance traditions, and community-based circulation rather than global validation. Long before the Grammys paid attention, amapiano had already crossed borders, reshaped club cultures, and influenced electronic and house production far beyond the continent. Its initial absence from the Academy’s vocabulary was not due to a lack of impact, but a lack of institutional language. When a genre does not fit the existing map, the map becomes the problem.

When acknowledgement finally arrived, it came with limits. In the lead-up to and aftermath of the introduction of Best African Music Performance, the Recording Academy began explicitly naming amapiano in its educational materials and press explanations, positioning it alongside Afrobeats, Afro-house, Afro-pop, and Afro-fusion as a defined contemporary African genre rather than a passing trend. That recognition matters. It confirms that amapiano is intelligible to the institution as a coherent musical form. Yet that clarity has not translated into equal access across the Grammy landscape. In practice, amapiano remains largely routed into African-specific categories, with only occasional movement into Global Music spaces when the work leans toward the spiritual or cross-cultural. Entry into Pop, Dance, or Electronic categories remains structurally rare.

It is within this constrained framework that the Grammy win for “Bayethe” becomes instructive. While not an amapiano record in the strict sense, its recognition in Best Global Music Performance demonstrates that South African rhythmic languages, spiritual textures, and cyclical groove structures are legible to Grammy voters. The sound is heard. The musical logic is understood. Yet club-rooted amapiano, despite its global influence, continues to be redirected away from broader electronic or dance classifications. The signal is mixed. Recognition exists, but it is carefully contained.

What emerges is a quieter but more revealing truth. Amapiano is acknowledged as culture, but not yet as power. The Academy names the genre correctly and allows it into eligibility pipelines, yet stops short of letting it challenge dominant genre categories on equal footing. The delay is not artistic. It is institutional. The music has already crossed borders. The structures governing recognition have been slower to follow.

Defenders of the current system often argue that a single African category increases visibility, that it guarantees a spotlight on a global stage. Visibility does matter. But visibility that flattens difference comes at a cost. Being seen is not the same as being understood. A framework that treats African music as a single sound teaches audiences, voters, and even artists themselves to hear it that way.

Others argue that the Academy cannot create categories for everything. History suggests otherwise. Latin music did not always have multiple Grammy categories. Those distinctions emerged in response to growth, influence, and sustained pressure. African music has already demonstrated global reach, commercial power, and cultural impact. The reluctance to grant it similar structural specificity reflects perception more than practicality.

The solution does not require an explosion of new awards or an unwieldy overhaul. It requires a willingness to treat African music as other musical ecosystems are treated, with precision and care. Imagine a framework where Afrobeats, amapiano, Francophone African pop, and traditional or indigenous forms are evaluated within their own lanes, where collaboration does not erase origin, and where voters are asked to compare like with like. Such a shift would not solve every problem, but it would change the incentives in meaningful ways.

What moments like Tyla’s wins ultimately reveal is not an artist issue, but a design issue. The Grammys are not merely reflecting culture. They are shaping it. When the structure rewards familiarity over difference, the music bends accordingly. Africa does not need one box. It never has. What it needs is space to be heard on its own terms, not as a genre, not as an aesthetic shortcut, but as a complex and living collection of sounds. Until the Grammys learn how to listen that way, the problem will remain, no matter how many trophies change hands.