13th February, 2024
By Nehru Odeh
Harvey Mason Jr, the Chief Executive Officer of the Recording Academy, the organizing body of the Grammys Awards, has laid to rest the controversy surrounding the 2024 Grammy Awards.
The clarification came in the wake of notable Nigerian artistes losing out in various categories in which they were nominated.
It would be recalled that Nigerian superstars such as Burna Boy, Davido, Asake and Ayra Starr didn’t win in any of the categories in which they were nominated and this raised a lot of dust, with many Nigerians questioning the credibility of the awards and how the winners were voted for.
However, Mason has revealed how winners were selected for the prestigious music awards. Addressing the concerns in a viral video, Manson said that Grammy winners were chosen based on votes from members of the Recording Academy, who are music professionals in the United States.
He said that the selection process is not influenced by committees, labels, or journalists.
“You have to understand that the only way to win is to have the member of the academy vote for you. To be a member of the academy you have to be a professional, working in music in the United States for now. Hopefully, we grow that,” he said.
“But right now, if you are working professionally in the United States you can become a member of the recording academy.
“Once you are a member of the recording academy, all the music is submitted, the members listen to it and they evaluate it on the quality of the art.
“Not the sales, not the streams, not how many fans, but purely on the opinion. It is very hard, as you all know because it is subjective.
“It is no best song or best record, it is just the opinion of that membership of that particular year. That is how you win a Grammy. The voters vote. There is no committee, no journalist, and there are no labels.
“It is the music professionals voting for their peers,” he said.
It would also be recalled that Jay Z, the US rapper, also slammed the Grammy Awards for “never giving” Beyonce, his wife, ‘Album of the Year’ category in spite of her impressive record of 32 wins.
During Jay-Z’s acceptance speech for the Dr Dre Global Impact Award at the Grammys, he stated further: “Some of you will go home tonight and feel like you’ve been robbed, some of you may be robbed, some of you don’t even belong in the categories.”
Also, last year, Angelique Kidjo said the Grammy Awards need to embrace “diversity and gender equality” to survive.
Greg Carr, associate professor in the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University, says the music industry was built on exclusion.
“Once exclusion was no longer an option, the inclusion of Black music has been curated, at least historically, very carefully, to absorb that music while minimizing black people,” he says.