by Vanessa J. Cheeks
She took the stage, doling out tearful “thank you’s” to her husband and child in breathless surprise as she accepted the 59th Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Adele, not Beyoncé took home the honor for her album 25. A shock to not only herself but to the rest of us watching at home.
Not lost on Adele, who acknowledge the monumental impact Beyoncé’s Lemonade had on the music industry and Black people specifically, was the inability for white artist to create a body of work that directly speaks to black listeners. ” The way you make me and my friends feel, the way you make my black friends feel is empowering.” said the 28 year old songstress during her acceptance speech.
Less than 20 percent of Album of the Year recipients have been black artists and Lemonade would have made Beyoncé the first black female artists to take it since the Miseducation of Lauren Hill in 1999. In a tweet, Solange Knowles, who snagged an award for her single Cranes in the Sky took to twitter to talk about the struggle of black artists to be recognized in such a prestigious category.
“There have only been two black winners in the last 20 years for album of the year there have been over 200 black artist who have performed,” Knowles tweeted, then deleted.
This is not the only major award show to get the lights shed on their problematic practices. Other major academies are making big changes to accommodate the ostracized minority members after public outcry.
The Oscars set a goal to double diverse membership by the year 2020 with intense initiatives including extending voting status to ten years, recruiting new members sans their previous sponsorship requirement and adding new members to their board. This was all in response to April Reigns viral hashtag #oscarssowhite protesting the fact that nominations for the top four categories at the 2016 Oscars were held only by white actors, despite stellar performances from their minority counterparts.
The British Academy for Film and Television Arts followed suit with more substantial changes to their membership process. They also made it clear that any body of work that did not feature a diverse cast would never be considered for top awards. Check and Mate Oscars.
So what does this mean for the Grammy’s? In years past the award show has been challenged on their lack of diversity which rears its ugly head, like other award shows, in their voting practices. Members are given free rein to cast opinions (or not) on genres they have little knowledge of. A 2014 article written by Rob Kenner describes the system as “fatally flawed.”
“Bottom line: the vast majority of the nominations are chosen by people who have little real expertise in a given field. I refrained from voting in heavy metal and classical because I know very little about those genres. But I could have if I wanted to, and that strikes me as a problem.” Wrote Kenner in 2014 and little has changed.
The practice does not leave heavy metal gods out in the cold but statistically proves that black artists are overlooked, underrepresented or stuck in an “urban” category despite our hand in laying the foundation for much of music today.
Not everyone see’s the lack of major award wins as a diversity issue.
The introduction of the Urban Contemporary award, a category of R & B first awarded in 2013, the Hip Hop category was added in 1995 are examples of the Grammy’s recognizing music traditionally made by black artists and awarding them for work done in their genres.
But is it enough? As seen with other award shows it’s not the bodies of work that are not good enough. Issues arise when systems in place keep these artists from receiving awards that transcend their pre-determined category,awards like album of the year. Beyonces Lemonade contains rock, country, r & B, and “Urban Contemporary” sounds and was accompanied with a visual album that was stunning. It was an album of albums and yet it did not transcend?
While the Recording Academy has made way to include streaming services (which made way for chance the rapper) the next move should be in diversifying its membership and re-tooling the voting process. This means encouraging those who actually listen and connect with black music be heard on who should be taking home these top awards.
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