African music gets special Grammy recognition

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The prestigious American music awards, The Grammys, are launching three new categories for the 66th edition next year - most notably, Best African Music Performance. The announcement comes at a time when the Afrobeats genre is making headlines and selling out arenas around the world through the likes of Wizkid and Burna Boy. The category will recognise a broad variety of continental genres including Mapouka from Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana's Highlife, and Bongo Flava of Tanzania. The Recording Academy says it wants to highlight music which embodies the “regional melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic traditions” of Africa. For Newsday, Deejay Abass - DJ, broadcaster and long-time promoter of African music in the UK - gave his assessment of the Grammy Awards initiative. "With the explosion of Afrobeats... that has created a new buzz. That has necessitated a new look from the Academy. Now we have a new genre [category], but even in Nigeria, Afrobeats is just one genre." (Pic: Burna Boy; Credit: BBC)