Grammy Awards renames Best World Music Album Title to avoid “Connotations of Colonialism”

The Grammys are renaming its Best World Music Album award to Best Global Music Album to help remove any previous connotations it had with colonialism. The category was first introduced back in 1991; the new name will help embrace a global mindset. The Grammys have followed the footsteps of the Academy Awards – which recently renamed its Best Foreign Language Film to Best International Feature Film.

The Recording Academy released a statement which said, “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.” They continued to say “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.”

However, this isn’t the only newly named category we’ll be seeing at the 2021 awards. The Grammys have renamed many categories such as, Best Melodic Rap Performance (previously Best Rap/Sung Performance), Best Latin Pop or Urban Album (previously Best Latin Pop Album) and Best Progressive R&B Album (previously Best Urban Contemporary Album).

The full list of categories will be announced on November 24.