The Recording Academy has announced that the Grammy Award for Best World Music Album has been renamed.
The award, which was won by Beninese singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo (pictured above) earlier this year, will now be called Best Global Music Album. This follows previous changes to the names of Grammy Award categories including Best Urban Contemporary Album becoming Best Progressive R&B Album.
In a statement announcing the change to the Best World Music Album category, the Recording Academy said: "As we continue to embrace a truly global mindset, we update our language to reflect a more appropriate categorisation 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 symbolises 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."
