While the music charts are dominated by artists from a myriad of backgrounds and nationalities, the vast majority of awards dished out at ceremonies such as the Grammys have been to white musicians.
The biggest test of the UK music industry’s assertion that things have changed comes on Wednesday at the Brit awards. Last year, not a single black British artist was among the nominees, prompting a viral campaign of outrage dubbed #BritsSoWhite and condemnation from artists including Laura Mvula and Stormzy.
This year, however, is a very different story. Grime, the genre born in the council estates of east London 15 years ago and long ignored by the Brits, is finally represented by multiple nominations for Skepta, Stormzy and Kano.
Emeli Sandé, Nao and Lianne La Havas are up for best female and Craig David, Michael Kiwanuka, Kano and Skepta are all nominated for best male. For the first time, there is only one white artist nominated in the category: David Bowie.
Drake, Beyoncé, Solange, the Weeknd and Rihanna dominate the international categories.
For Nao, a best female solo artist nominee, it has been a long time coming. “Definitely, there has been a reluctance to acknowledge black music as mainstream. Maybe they have the wrong interpretation of the music.
“British grime music, for example, speaks about their reality, how they’ve lived and what their world is like and maybe people, or the music industry anyway, doesn’t want to accept that or finds it uncomfortable,” she said.
“That’s maybe why they don’t celebrate it at these awards ceremonies, because it’s wrongly perceived as aggressive or dark or angry or too political.”
Indeed, two years ago a performance at the Brits by Kanye West, where some of the biggest grime artists joined him on stage, prompted 126 complaints to Ofcom.
For Nao, there is still a disconnect between what audiences are listening to and what the industry celebrates at the major awards. That perpetuates an outdated idea that music made by black musicians is urban and therefore niche, while music made by white artists is accessible and mainstream, she argues.
Nao points out that at last week’s Grammys, despite a diverse lineup of nominees, all the major awards were still taken home by white artists. Beyoncé only won the best urban contemporary gong rather than best album for Lemonade – the third time she has lost out to a white artist.
Similarly, Kendrick Lamar, whose To Kill a Butterfly was one of the biggest selling and most critically lauded albums in the world two years ago, also only won the best urban contemporary award. This “cultural bias” against black artists prompted a blog post this week by Frank Ocean explaining why he did not submit his music to the Grammys at all.
“One hundred per cent I find it so frustrating,” said Nao, who said this was not an experience restricted to the Grammys. “I don’t know what a black artist has to do really to be able to let go of the label ‘black’ and just be an artist. Why do black people have to be marginalised to urban categories or automatically classified as R&B? Basically it’s bullshit; it needs to just be dropped.”
Yet Nao said she remained optimistic that this year’s recognition of black artists at the Brits – with an unprecedented 45% of nominees from black and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds – is more than just a knee-jerk reaction to last year’s controversy.
In response to the Brits’ 2016 whitewash, organisers performed a major shakeup of the 1,000 people who sit on the voting academy, setting up a panel to help bring in 700 new members who better reflect the music industry, including 48% women and 17% BAME.
BBC Radio 1Xtra’s A.Dot was among those invited to be part of the voting academy, which she said “demonstrated a conscious rethinking of the entire nomination process on their part”.
“The gatekeepers to these awards are often so far removed from their audience, making it impossible for the nominees to be a completely accurate reflection of popular culture and this year that all changed,” she said. “The likes of Stormzy, Kano, Skepta and Solange are truly deserving of their award nods, so these aren’t just token gestures to rectify the cultural omissions of yesteryear – these are necessary, well-earned and overdue plaudits.”
Ged Doherty, the chairman of music industry body the the BPI, which organises the Brits, said it had toyed with introducing genre categories this year, such as best grime, but after consultation with artists such as Stormzy decided it would be tokenistic: “I definitely don’t want the Brits to become anything like the Grammys.”
