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The Grammys Have Changed The Name Of The World Music Album Award Over ‘Connotations Of Colonialism’

Getty Image The award is now called Best Global Music Album. …

The Grammy Award for Best World Music Album was introduced at the 1992 ceremony, but nearly 30 years later, the Recording Academy feels it’s time for a change. Yesterday, they announced that beginning with next year’s Grammys, the award will be known as Best Global Music Album.

The Academy explained the decision in a statement:

“As we continue to embrace a truly global mindset, we update our language to reflect a more appropriate categorization that seeks to engage and celebrate the current scope of music from around the world. Over the summer we held discussions with artists, ethnomusicologists, and linguists from around the world who determined that there was an opportunity to update the best world music album category toward a more relevant, modern, and inclusive term… The change symbolizes a departure from the connotations of colonialism, folk, and ‘non-American’ that the former term embodied while adapting to current listening trends and cultural evolution among the diverse communities it may represent.”

After the 2003 Grammys, the Best World Music Album award was split into two categories: Best Traditional World Music Album and Best Contemporary World Music Album. However, they were merged back into Best World Music Album for the 2012 ceremony.

This comes months after the Academy announced a slew of other changes, like the renaming of the Best Urban Contemporary Album category, which is now known as Best Progressive R&B Album.

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Artist Spotlight

“Subterranean Homesick Blues” finds a new direction through Ghost of Panama

Ghost of Panama

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This new interpretation is very much shaped by the production, made at Ghost of Panama’s home studio in West London. The setting allows an intimate approach to reinterpreting a familiar song and lets the group engage directly with the material, taking it in a new artistic direction.

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Their version of this 60-year-old classic shows that respecting a song’s history can also mean breaking the rules and finding new ways to express its spirit. Fundamentally, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” presents Ghost of Panama as artists who want to engage with the past without being tied to it. The release’s strongest identity is a familiar heritage reimagined through a singularly forward-looking creative vision.

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Artist Spotlight

“NO MORE” by Amanda Holley connects healing, awakening, and survival

Amanda Holley

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Holley had a premonition of the song six months before the world went into global shutdown. In the vocal booth, working out melodies with her collaborators, she pictured people in the streets. Those images were hard to imagine at the time, but subsequent events would make them painfully familiar.

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Photo Credit: Yulia Shusharina

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