Amaarae also argued songs like Burna Boy’s ‘Last Last’ should be able to compete in the hip-hop category of the award
By Kehinde Okeowo
Ghanaian-American singer and songwriter, Ama Serwah Genfi, popularly known as Amaarae, has frowned at how African music genres are jam-packed under one category during Grammy Awards.
The Recording Academy, organisers of the Grammy Awards recently created a category for ‘Best African Music Performance.’
According to them, the category is open to both contemporary and traditional music from the African continent, including Afrobeats, Afro-pop, Amapiano, High Life, Fuji, etc.
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However, while reacting to the development during a recent chat on Metro TV, Amaarae labelled packing all African musical genres under a single category at the prestigious award as “reductive.”
She also argued songs like remix of Rema’s ‘Calm Down’ with Selena Gomez, should be able to compete in the pop category while Burna Boy’s ‘Last Last’ should be able to vie for the hip-hop category.
Speaking during the interview, 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.”