Ladysmith Black Mambazo Win Their 5th Grammy Award, But There’s a Small Problem

The South African isicathamiya group, which gets a nomination almost every year, bagged their fifth Grammy award last night.

The group won under the Best World Music Album category for their album Shaka Zulu Revisited: 30th Anniversary Celebration.

This is really great. Black Mambazo are legendary, and the group has gone through two generations of members. They deserve all the good shit. But it's 2018, can we do away with the World Music label? The Grammy committee should, by now, know better than to wholesale categorize all music from outside the US under one umbrella genre.

And while, it's great for the acappella group to keep bagging Grammys, it shows just how little research goes behind music from other continents.

For instance, Afrobeats is the most visible and popular African genre at the moment, and it travels worldwide–especially to the US and the UK. So the genre not being recognized says a lot about the Grammys.

Listen to Shaka Zulu Revisited: 30th Anniversary Celebration below and download it here.

Read: The Grammys Don't Care About African People (Yeezy Voice)