Considered the biggest music award show in the world, the Grammys has accounted for a plethora of African acts over the decades, recognizing their excellence and illustrious contributions to music and entertainment globally. One of Africa’s shining stars, the South African comedian Trevor Noah, will be hosting the show for the fifth consecutive time, with the 67th edition scheduled for 2nd February this year. Noah becomes the African with the highest hosting duties and is behind Andy Williams (seven), John Denver (six), and LL Cool J (five) in the list of those who have hosted five or more Grammy telecasts. Noah is also a nominee for the Best Comedy Album category, alongside Nikki Glaser, Jim Gaffigan and Ricky Gervais.
Ahead of the forthcoming ceremony, Nigerian singer Tems leads in Africa with three Grammy nominations—Best African Music Performance for Love Me JeJe, Best Global Music Album for Born in the Wild, and Best R&B Song for Burning.
Apart from Noah, there are other Africans who have struck gold with historic and multiple recognitions in the history of the awards show. There’s Beninese singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo who holds the record for the most awarded African act at the Grammys, with five trophies to her name, beginning with the 2008 Best Contemporary World Music Album award for Djin Djin. She bagged three awards in Best World Music Album and a recent one in Best Global Music Album award for Mother Nature featuring other celebrated African acts such as Mr Eazi and Burna Boy.
Let’s take a quick look at a few other African Grammy-winning artists.
Miriam Makeba
Miriam Makeba, popularly known as Mama Afrika and the Empress of African song, is one of the most influential African music artists of the 20th century. During her lifetime, the South African singer, actor and civil rights activist introduced songs in her local languages Xhosa and Zulu to Western audiences and often used her music to combat the Apartheid system in her South Africa. Her musical style was a unique blend of jazz, Afropop and traditional African sound. By the late 1950s, she had gained prominence in southern Africa as a vocalist, attracted the interest of performers outside Africa, and settled in the US where she blossomed. Due to her activism, she was denied entry into South Africa in 1960 and lived in exile for three decades. Between 1964 and 1965, Makeba was nominated twice for the Best Folk Recording category. In 1966, she became the first Grammy-winning African artist, earning the Best Folk Recording Award for An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba together with American actor and music artist Harry Belafonte. Decades later, in 2001, she received a nomination for Best World Music Album. For Homeland. With a total nine nominations and one win, Makeba will be remembered as a pacesetter in the globalization of African music.
Sade Adu
Born on January 16 1959 in Ibadan, Nigeria, and raised in Britain, Helen Folashade Adu, popularly known as Sade Adu, attended fashion school in London where she became a pop star and lead vocalist for her band Sade. At age 27, in 1986, Sade Adu became the first Nigerian-born artist to win a Grammy, doing so as Best New Artist for No Ordinary Love. Together with her band, the British-Nigerian singer flourished and three other Grammys in 1993, 2001, and 2010 from a total of eight nominations.
Babatunde Olatunji and Sikiru Adepoju
Babatunde Olatunji, a master drummer, and pan-Africanist, gained international recognition with his debut album Drums of Passion in 1959. His musical influences extended to artists such as the Latin Rock band Santana, Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, and John Coltrane. Being one of the foremost Nigerians to represent the country at the Grammys, Olatunji won the inaugural Best World Music Album in 1992. One of the band members and a talking drum legend Sikiru Adetoun was one of Olatunji’s thriving years in the 1990s. Adepoju is also credited as an artist on Hart’s 2007 album Global Drum Project, earning a Grammy win for Best Contemporary World Music Album.
Cesária Évora
Évora was born and raised in Cape Verde, where she discovered her musical talent early in life. She began singing to keep her sorrows away as a teenager in the bars of her hometown of Mindelo. Often using Creole-Portuguese, she became associated with the mornas, a Cape Verdean folk music and dance genre that addresses the country’s painful and ignoble history of slave trade and alienation—believed to date back to the 18th century. But it was not until 1988, while living in Paris, that her she earned international recognition. Apart from mornas, Évora often embraced other genres, including coladeiras—a more vibrant version of Cape Verdean music. In 2004, she bagged her first Grammy in the Best Contemporary World Music Album category for Voz d’Amor—her only win in a total of six nominations.
Ali Farka Touré
Malian folk multi-instrumentalist and folk singer Ali Farka Touré brought unprecedented global attention to Malian music as a pioneer of African desert blues. Born in a village on the banks of the Niger, he fell in love with music at a young age and would immerse himself in the songs of musicians that played instruments of the spirits such as njarka (single string fiddle) and ngoni (four string lute) and njerkle (single string guitar). His musical style was a blend of traditional music and African American blues. The highly talented musician composed and songs in different languages, including Songhay, Tamasheq and Bambara. Out of five Grammy nominations, Touré won three plaques. His first was the 1995 Best World Music Album for Talking Timbuktu, which he jointly won with American guitarist/producer Ry Cooder. He also collaborated with Malian musician and kora maestro Toumani Diabaté on albums such as In the Heart of the Moon and Ali and Toumani, which won the Best Traditional World Music Album in 2006 and 2011 respectively.
Youssou N’Dour
Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour is known for his exceptional vocal range and traditional music patterns. He popularized the mbalax, a Senegalese music style that fuses Wolof traditional instrumental and vocal forms with Cuban and other Latin American influences. N’Dour was brought up in a devout Muslim household and began performing at local religious festivities at only 12 years old. In his early teenage years, he was already part of a company that performed outside dance clubs in Dakar. In 2005, he won a Grammy award for Best Contemporary World Music Album for Egypt, and had other Grammys in 1995, 2001, 2004, and 2009.
Burna Boy
A shining star of the current generation of Afrobeats stars, Burna Boy, nicknamed African Giant, gained international recognition for his lyricism and complex musical influences that cut across pop, dancehall, hip-hop, R&B, and reggae. He has often been inspired by the rhythms of deceased but evergreen Afrobeat legend and activist, Fela Aníkúlápó-Kuti—as seen in songs such as Dangote and Ye. In 2021, at the 63rd Grammy Awards, the Nigerian superstar took home the Best Global Music Album prize for Twice as Tall, outsmarting fellow nominees Bebel Gilberto, Antibalas, Tinariwen and Anoushka Shankar. Burna Boy has been nominated a total of eleven times at the Grammys, including the Best African Music Performance category for Higher ahead of the forthcoming 67th Annual Grammy Awards. Other nominees in this category are Yemi Alade, Wizkid & Asake, Chris Brown, Davido & Lojay, and Tems.
